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Soup

Cucumber and Pea Soup

A chilled soup made with cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, mint, butter, peas, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, and mint in a pot.

  2. Stir over gentle heat for nearly an hour.

Finish the soup

  1. Add salt and season with white pepper or cayenne.

  2. Drain the mixture from the butter.

  3. Add the drained mixture to the strained stock.

  4. Let the mixture boil gently until the butter rises to the surface.

  5. Add the boiled young peas.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup immediately.

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. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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 a fresh, watery body.
Lettuce hearts
Add soft body and a mild, sweet vegetable base as they cook down.
Onions
Provide savoury aroma and depth as they soften in the pot.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, carrying flavour across the soup.
Young peas
Add natural sweetness and a thicker, more substantial texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil gently until the butter rises to the surface. A gentle boil lets the butter separate and float so it can be skimmed off cleanly. A hard, rolling boil can break up the fat and cloud the soup.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce, onion, parsley, white pepper, butter, peas):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, onion, parsley, white pepper, butter, peas. 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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