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Cucumber Soup

A chilled cucumber soup with veal stock, optional egg yolks, chili vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 remove seeds from the cucumbers. Sprinkle with salt and let drain for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine cucumbers and the white part of the onions. Cover with veal stock and stew gently for 45 to 75 minutes until tender.

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

  3. Stir in arrow‑root or rice flour to thicken as needed, then add boiling cream and season with salt and cayenne.

Finish and serve

  1. For an alternative, mix egg yolks with chili vinegar and stir in just before serving, without boiling.

  2. Garnish with minced parsley if desired.

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 main body of the soup, giving its fresh, mild flavor and bulk once stewed and sieved.
Veal stock
Supplies the savory liquid base that carries the cucumber flavor.
Arrow-root or rice flour
Thickens the strained soup to a smooth, body-giving consistency.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Optionally enrich and thicken the soup, added off the heat so they do not scramble.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and curdle or scramble if the soup boils, leaving a grainy texture. Adding them just before serving, off the heat, keeps the soup smooth.

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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