Skip to main content
Main

Cucumber Soup

A chilled or warm soup made from cucumbers, onions, veal stock, thickened with arrow‑root or rice flour, 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 rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 734 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare, split, and remove seeds from the cucumbers. 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. Cover with veal stock and simmer gently for 45 to 75 minutes until tender.

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

  3. Stir in arrow‑root or rice flour while boiling to thicken the soup.

  4. Add boiling cream and serve immediately. Season with salt and cayenne.

Optional finish

  1. For a variation, mix egg yolks with chili vinegar and stir in minced parsley just before serving, 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 + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together734 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main body of the soup and give it its fresh, mild flavour.
Arrow-root or rice flour
Starch that thickens the soup as it boils.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid and savoury depth in which the vegetables cook.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when added without boiling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the soup boils after they are added, the proteins can scramble and the soup turns grainy.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, veal, rice, cream, egg, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, veal, rice, cream, 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

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes