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Cream of Lettuce Soup

A creamy soup made from shredded lettuce, stock, roux, onion, parsley, milk, and egg, served with crisp dinner biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 to the heat.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the milk in a separate vessel, season with salt and pepper.

  2. Whip an egg and stir it into the milk, then pour this into the soup.

  3. Serve the soup with crisp dinner biscuits on the side.

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
Forms the bulk of the soup and, once rubbed through a colander, gives it a smooth green body.
White roux
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the soup.
Stock
Provides the savoury liquid in which the lettuce cooks and softens.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and milk to the soup. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the soup is boiling when the egg mixture goes in, it can scramble and turn grainy. Warming the egg-milk mixture gently and keeping the soup below a boil keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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