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Cucumber Soup

A chilled or warm soup made from cucumbers, onions, veal stock, thickener, and optional cream, yolks, 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 arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare, split, and remove seeds from the cucumbers. Sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Let drain for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. In a deep saucepan, combine the cucumbers and the white part of the onions.

  2. Cover with veal stock and simmer gently until tender, about 45 to 75 minutes.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Add more stock to achieve the desired soup quantity.

  5. Stir in a thickener like arrowroot or rice flour until the soup reaches a good consistency.

  6. Add the boiling cream.

  7. Serve immediately, seasoning with salt and cayenne pepper.

Finish

  1. Mix egg yolks with chili vinegar.

  2. Stir in minced parsley just before serving, ensuring the soup does not boil after adding.

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 + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 it its fresh, mild flavor.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid and savory body in which the cucumbers cook and soften.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the soup to a smooth, good consistency without making it gluey.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when stirred in, adding body and richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks gently and keep the soup from boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and curdle if the soup boils, leaving a grainy texture. Keep the heat low once yolks are added.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, veal, cream, pepper, egg, vinegar):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, veal, cream, pepper, 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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