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Soup

Herb Soup

A soup of cucumbers, spring onions, and lettuces cooked in butter and stock, thickened with flour and butter, optionally finished with cream.

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

Herb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter over low heat in a stewpan.

  2. Add the cucumbers, spring onions, and lettuces to the pan.

  3. Cover and let the vegetables cook for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Add enough stock to reach the desired soup quantity.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Thicken the soup with flour and butter, or stir in cream.

  4. If desired, add spinach juice for color.

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

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

  2. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

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

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body and fresh, mild flavor of the soup.
Lettuces
Add bulk and soften into the soup, contributing vegetal flavor and body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the vegetables cook gently in it.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a fuller, smoother body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked with fat to form a smooth roux before liquid is added; adding it raw can leave lumps and a pasty taste, and the soup must then be kept at a simmer so the starch thickens fully.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, lettuce, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, lettuce, butter, flour, 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.

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