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Cream of Lettuce Soup

A creamy soup made from shredded lettuce, stock, roux, onion, parsley, milk, egg, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

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: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Lettuce Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the shredded lettuce in the stock for 30 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a colander and return it to the heat.

  3. Stir in the white roux, minced onion, and parsley.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate vessel, heat the milk and season with pepper and salt, then stir in the whipped egg.

  2. Pour this mixture into a tureen, add the lettuce soup to the tureen, and serve with dinner biscuits.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + biscuittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 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 body and green flavour of the soup once cooked and pressed through.
White roux
Thickens the soup as the starch cooks and swells in the hot liquid.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the milk mixture, giving it a smoother, richer texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the savoury flavour of the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the whipped egg. Egg thickens by setting when heated. If the milk mixture is too hot or the egg is added too quickly, it can curdle or turn grainy instead of silky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, parsley, milk, pepper, egg, biscuit):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, parsley, milk, pepper, egg, biscuit. 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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