Skip to main content
Soup

Cucumber Soup.

A chilled cucumber soup made with butter, stock, herbs, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chervil and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel the cucumber, quarter it, and remove the seeds.

  2. Slice the cucumber thinly and sprinkle with salt to draw out water.

  3. Drain the cucumber and place it in a saucepan with the butter.

  4. Warm the cucumber through without browning it.

Simmer the soup

  1. Pour the stock over the cucumber and add the sorrel, chervil, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil for 40 minutes.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and add just before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Chervil + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Forms the body of the soup and supplies its fresh, mild flavour and texture.
Butter
Enriches the cucumber and carries flavour when it is warmed gently in the pan.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream-enriched soup and give it a smooth, rich body when added off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the soup's flavour, mellowing it when combined with the yolks.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury depth for the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cream. If the yolk-cream mixture boils, the egg proteins scramble and the soup turns grainy. Add it just before serving, off the heat, to keep it smooth.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chervil, sorrel, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chervil, sorrel, pepper, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More cucumber soup recipes

Cold 4 See all 50 →

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes