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Summer Soup

A vegetable soup made with cucumbers, onions, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, stock, mint, parsley, peas, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Summer Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cucumbers, onions, potatoes, lettuce, and cabbage.

  2. Fry the vegetables in butter until softened.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add 3 pints of stock and simmer for 4 to 6 hours.

  2. Stir in green mint, parsley, and green peas, and simmer for an additional 2 hours.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Thicken the soup with a mixture of flour and butter.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + cabbagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during simmering to give the soup body and a thicker texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter, giving it a smoother, heavier body.
Butter
Softens the vegetables during frying and carries flavour into the soup.
Green peas
Add sweetness and colour, and soften into the soup during the final simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer and finish. Simmering for 4 to 6 hours in stock must be gentle and continuous so the vegetables break down without scorching on the base. Thickening with flour and butter works best when the flour is cooked into the butter first, which avoids lumps.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, potato, lettuce, cabbage, parsley, peas):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, potato, lettuce, cabbage, parsley, peas. 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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