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Cucumber Soup

A warm soup made from cucumbers, onions, veal stock, thickened with arrow-root or rice flour, optionally enriched with cream, egg yolks, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 empty the cucumbers, then sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt and let drain for 1 hour.

  2. In a deep saucepan, combine the cucumbers and the white part of the onions, covering with veal stock.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne while stewing.

  4. Stew gently for 45 to 75 minutes until tender.

Finish the soup

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

  2. Stir in arrow-root or rice flour to thicken as needed, then add boiling cream and serve immediately.

  3. For a variation, mix egg yolks with chili vinegar and stir in minced parsley just before serving, without boiling.

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 bulk of the soup and give its fresh, mild flavour and pale green colour.
Veal stock
Provides the savoury liquid base that cooks the cucumbers and sets the soup's body.
Arrow-root or rice flour
Starch that thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, silky texture.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Optional enrichment that thickens and adds richness when gently warmed.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling cream and serve immediately. Cream can split or curdle if it is overheated or held too long after the starch-thickened soup is hot, so it should be added at the last moment and served straight away.

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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