Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Soup

A chilled cucumber soup made with cucumbers, onions, veal stock, thickened with arrowroot or rice flour, and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare, split, and remove seeds from the cucumbers.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let drain for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine cucumbers and the white part of the onions.

  2. Cover with veal stock and simmer gently for 45 to 75 minutes until tender.

  3. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Add more stock to reach desired soup quantity.

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

  6. Add boiling cream and serve immediately.

Finish with garnishes

  1. Mix egg yolks with chili vinegar.

  2. Stir in just before serving, adding minced parsley 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. Cucumber + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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, cool flavor and body once pressed.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid base and savory depth in which the cucumbers cook until tender.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the strained soup to the desired consistency without making it heavy.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, adding body and a creamy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in just before serving, adding minced parsley without boiling.. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and curdle if boiled, so the soup must stay below boiling once they are added. Parsley's fresh flavor and color also fade with prolonged heat.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, veal, cream, pepper, egg, vinegar):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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

More cucumber soup recipes

Cold 4 See all 50 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes