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Cucumber Soup

A chilled cucumber soup made with cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, butter, bread crumbs, and boiled water, finished with flour, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the cucumbers and onions.

  2. Cut the lettuces, removing the outside leaves.

Make the soup

  1. Add the parsley, pepper, and salt to a pan with the butter.

  2. Stew over gentle heat for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water and add the bread crumbs.

  4. Let it stew gently for 2 hours.

  5. If too thin, mix 1 teaspoon of flour with 1 ounce of butter and stir it in.

  6. Boil for an additional 10 minutes and add 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the soup and give it its fresh, mild flavor.
Cos lettuces
Add body and a delicate vegetable flavor to the soup base.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup as they soften during the long stew.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the herbs and vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the soup if it is too thin, with the butter helping it blend smoothly.
Vinegar
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. If the flour is stirred in as a dry powder, it clumps and stays lumpy. Mixing it with butter first coats the flour so it disperses evenly and thickens the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce, bread, parsley, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, bread, parsley, butter, pepper, flour. 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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