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Cucumber Soup

A soup of cucumbers, onions, veal stock, thickened with arrow-root or rice flour, optionally finished with cream, egg yolks, chili vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 734 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare, split, and remove seeds from the cucumbers.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let drain for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. In a deep saucepan, combine cucumbers and the white part of the onions. Cover with veal stock and stew gently for 45 to 75 minutes until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and add more stock to reach desired soup quantity.

  3. Stir in thickening agent (arrow-root or rice flour) until the soup reaches a good consistency.

  4. Add boiling cream and season with salt and cayenne.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix egg yolks with chili vinegar and stir in minced parsley just before serving, without boiling.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Cucumber + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together734 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the soup, giving its fresh, mild flavor and bulk.
Veal stock
Supplies the savory liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Arrow-root or rice flour
Thickens the soup to a smooth, lightly body-filled consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help enrich the soup's texture when used as an optional addition.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken and can curdle or scramble when overheated. Stirring them in just before serving, off the boil, keeps the soup smooth and prevents graininess.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, veal, rice, cream, egg, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, veal, rice, cream, egg, vinegar. 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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