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Soup

Cucumber Soup, White

A chilled soup made from pureed cucumbers, milk, broth, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Peel and cut the cucumbers into pieces.

  2. Boil the cucumbers in just enough water to cover them until reduced to a paste.

  3. Press the mixture through a colander, including the remaining water.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the broth and fresh milk.

  2. Stir in the cucumber puree and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Place thin slices of bread at the bottom of a soup tureen.

  4. When the soup is about to boil, pour it over the bread in the tureen.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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 flavour of the soup once cooked down into a puree.
Fresh milk
Adds creaminess and softness, giving the soup its white colour and smooth body.
Broth or consommé
Supplies the savoury liquid base that carries the cucumber puree.
Bread
Soaks up the hot soup in the tureen, adding body and a soft texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the soup over the bread at the right moment. The soup should be hot enough to soften the bread but not boiling hard, since prolonged high heat can curdle the milk and make the bread break down unevenly.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, pepper, sugar, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, pepper, sugar, bread. 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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