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Cream of Lettuce Soup

A creamy soup made with lettuce, rice, stock, butter, and cream, finished with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream of Lettuce Soup

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Lettuce Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the onion in butter for 5 minutes in a pot.

  2. Add lettuce, rice, salt, nutmeg, pepper berry, and white stock; cook for another 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cream and egg yolk just before serving.

  4. Remove the nutmeg and pepper berry before serving, or strain the soup.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Lettuce + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Provides the main vegetable body and fresh, mild green flavor of the soup.
Egg yolk
Thickens the soup and adds richness when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds fat and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Cooked rice
Adds body and helps thicken the soup as it simmers.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the onion and adds fat to the base.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and egg yolk just before serving. Egg yolk can curdle or turn grainy if it overheats, so it should be added off the heat or at the very end and mixed in gently.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lettuce, egg, rice, cream, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lettuce, egg, rice, cream, nutmeg, pepper. 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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