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Soup

Vegetable Soup

A cucumber, lettuce, mint, onion, pea, and butter soup thickened with flour and simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine cucumbers, cos lettuces, mint, onions, pepper, salt, peas, and parsley with butter.

  2. Stew the mixture over gentle heat for 30 minutes.

  3. Add boiling water and continue to stew for 2 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix flour with water to create a paste, then boil it with the soup for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the broth and carries flavour, giving the soup a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving a fuller texture.
Peas
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften during stewing.
Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable bulk and a mild, fresh flavour that softens with stewing.
Onions
Add savoury depth as they soften and release their sugars during long stewing.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour paste. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before adding, then boiled with the soup. Boiling activates the starch so it thickens evenly; adding dry flour directly causes lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce, mint, pepper, peas, parsley, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, mint, pepper, peas, parsley, 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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