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Soup

Cucumber and Pea Soup

A chilled soup of cucumbers, lettuce, onions, herbs, and peas, simmered with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Simmer the vegetables

  1. In a pot, combine cucumbers, lettuce hearts, onions, parsley, and mint.

  2. Stir over gentle heat for about 60 minutes.

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

Finish the soup

  1. Drain the mixture from the butter and add it to the strained stock.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil until the butter rises to the surface and is completely cleared.

  3. Stir in the boiled young peas and serve 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 most of the soup, giving it its fresh, mild flavor and watery body.
Lettuce hearts
Soften as they cook, adding body and a gentle, mild sweetness.
Onions
Add savory depth as they soften during the long, gentle cooking.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the stock and gives a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Young peas
Add sweetness and a soft, thickening body when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Bring to a gentle boil until the butter rises and clears. Butter fat separates and floats to the surface as it heats, so it must rise fully and clear before serving. Boiling hard can disturb the texture and cloud the soup, so the heat should stay gentle.

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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