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Vegetable Soup

A soup made from cucumbers, lettuce, mint, onions, peas, butter, and water, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice cucumbers and chop the insides of the cos lettuces.

Stew the vegetables

  1. Add mint, onions, pepper, salt, parsley, and peas to a saucepan.

  2. Melt butter in the saucepan and let vegetables stew in their own juices over low heat for 40 minutes.

  3. Pour boiling water over vegetables and stew for nearly 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken soup with a mixture of flour and water, then 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the stewing vegetables with fat, adding richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Peas
Add body and natural sweetness as they soften during the long stew.
Cucumbers
Contribute moisture and a mild, fresh flavour that dilutes during the long simmer.
Onions
Provide savoury depth and aroma as they soften and release their sugars slowly.

The step that matters

Pour boiling water over vegetables and stew for nearly 3 hours. Long, gentle stewing softens the vegetables fully and blends their flavours. Too vigorous a boil can break them down unevenly and make the soup cloudy or bitter, so keep it at a slow simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce, mint, pepper, parsley, peas, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, mint, pepper, parsley, peas, butter. 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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