Skip to main content
Main

Half a Cucumber

A cucumber and herb soup thickened with egg yolks and cream, served over toasted French roll crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Half a Cucumber

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and finely shred the lettuces, sorrel, tarragon, and chervil.

  2. Peel the cucumber, slice it thinly, and shred it.

  3. Dry the crust of the French roll in the oven for a few minutes, then cut it into small round pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the shredded vegetables and herbs, and cook for 5 minutes without discoloring.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and castor sugar, add the stock, and boil slowly until tender.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and cream together.

  4. Remove the stewpan from the heat and let it cool, then strain in the egg and cream mixture.

  5. Return the stewpan to the heat and stir until the eggs are cooked.

Serve

  1. Place the pieces in a tureen and pour the hot soup over them.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup into a smooth, creamy texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Butter
Fat that softens the shredded vegetables and herbs without browning them.
White stock
Liquid base that cooks the vegetables until tender.
Cucumber
Provides the main fresh, mild vegetable flavour and body in the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but curdle if they get too hot. Cooling the pan before straining and stirring over low heat until just cooked keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes