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Soup

Summer Soup

A chilled vegetable soup made with cucumber, cabbage, onion, spinach, mint, peas, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Summer Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and chop the lettuces, cucumber, and onion.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the lettuces, cucumber, onion, 1 cup of peas, mint, and butter.

  2. Cover with 1 quart of cold water, bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid and pass the vegetables through a sieve.

  4. Return the vegetables to the liquid and heat on the stove.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, then add the remaining 1 cup of previously boiled peas.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 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

Cabbage lettuces
Provide the bulk of the soup and a mild, vegetal body once simmered.
Cucumber
Adds fresh, cool flavour and moisture to the broth.
Shelled peas
Add sweetness and a soft, green texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering gently for 3 hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavour slowly without boiling the vegetables into a dull, murky liquid. Vigorous boiling can also break down the greens and cloud the broth.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, onion, spinach, peas, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, onion, spinach, peas, butter. 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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