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Cucumber Soup

A cucumber and onion soup thickened with arrowroot or rice flour, finished with cream or egg yolks and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, split, and remove seeds from the cucumbers. Sprinkle with salt and let drain for 1 hour.

  2. In a saucepan, combine cucumbers and onions, then cover with veal stock.

Cook and strain

  1. Stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour until tender.

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

  3. Stir in arrowroot or rice flour to thicken as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Add boiling cream and serve immediately.

  2. For a variation, use egg yolks and chili vinegar instead of cream, adding parsley just before serving without boiling.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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
Make up the bulk of the soup and give it its fresh, watery body.
Onions
Add savory aroma and flavor to the cucumber base.
Veal stock
Supplies savory depth and liquid to cook and thin the soup.
Cream
Adds richness, fat, and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
In the variation, they enrich and thicken the soup in place of cream.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks contain proteins that set with heat and will scramble or curdle if the soup boils, leaving it grainy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, veal, cream, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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