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Cucumber Soup

A chilled cucumber soup made with veal stock, cream, and optional egg yolk and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 a little salt over them 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 stew gently for 45 to 75 minutes until tender.

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

  4. Stir in thickener when boiling to achieve a good consistency.

  5. Add boiling cream and serve immediately.

Finish and garnish

  1. For a variation, mix egg yolks with chili vinegar and stir in just before serving, without boiling.

  2. Garnish with minced parsley if desired.

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, giving its fresh flavour and body once pressed and strained.
Veal stock
Provides savoury depth and the liquid in which the cucumbers become tender.
Thickener
Arrowroot or rice flour swells when heated, giving the soup a smooth, fuller consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Optional; their proteins can enrich and thicken the soup when stirred in without boiling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the thickener while boiling. Starch thickeners need to reach boiling to swell and set. If they are added too little or not fully heated, the soup stays thin or turns out lumpy. Stir steadily to distribute them evenly.

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.

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