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Cucumber Soup

A creamy cucumber soup made with butter, flour, stock, milk, cream, egg yolks, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel the cucumber and cut it into blocks.

  2. Boil the cucumber in a saucepan of water with salt for 10-15 minutes until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour smoothly, then add the stock and milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the cucumber and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, return it to the saucepan, and heat it.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the cream and egg yolks together, then strain into the soup.

  2. Cook for one minute, season, and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Forms the main body and fresh, mild flavour of the soup once puréed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries flavour through the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and liquid into a smooth, body-giving base.
White stock
Supplies the main liquid and the savoury flavour of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Thicken the finished soup and give it a silky, rich texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the soup boils after the cream and yolks go in, they can curdle and turn grainy, so keep the heat low for the final minute of cooking.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cream, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, egg. 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.

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