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Soup

Vegetable Soup

A cucumber, lettuce, mint, onion, pea, and parsley soup simmered with butter and thickened with flour.

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

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Add the cucumbers, cos lettuces, mint, onions, pepper, salt, peas, and parsley to a saucepan with the butter.

Cook the soup

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

  2. Pour in the boiling water and stew for 2 hours.

  3. Mix the flour with the teacup of water, then boil it with the soup for 15-20 minutes.

  4. 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
Adds richness and carries the vegetable flavours during the gentle stew.
Flour
Mixed with water and boiled in, it thickens the soup slightly.
Young peas
Give the soup its sweetness and body as they soften.
Cucumbers
Add moisture and a mild, fresh flavour as they soften in the stew.

The step that matters

Boiling the flour and water into the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps easily. Mixing it smoothly with cold water first lets the starch disperse, and boiling it fully then cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the soup evenly.

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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