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Cucumber Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 cucumbers, cut them into thick slices, quarter them, and remove the seeds.

  2. Boil the cucumber in a saucepan of salted water for 10 minutes, then drain.

  3. Melt 1 oz of butter in a stewpan, add the cucumber, cover, and steam for about 1 hour.

  4. Rub the cooked cucumber through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In the same stewpan, melt the remaining 1 oz of butter, add the flour, then pour in the hot stock and milk, stirring until boiling.

  2. Add the cucumber puree, simmer for a few minutes, then let the soup cool slightly.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and cream together, pour into the soup, and stir until it thickens, ensuring it does not boil.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable flavour and, once puréed, the body of the soup.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock and milk into a smooth base as it cooks with the butter.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup gently and add richness when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks set when heated, so the soup must be kept below boiling. Boiling can curdle the yolks, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thickened soup.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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