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Potage De Concombres Aux Petits Pois

A French cucumber soup with peas, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 629 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potage De Concombres Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare your consommé as usual.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the hot consommé into a soup tureen.

  2. Add the prepared green peas.

  3. Add the sliced cucumbers cooked in demi-glace with sugar.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together629 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Consommé
Forms the clear, savoury broth that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Green peas
Adds body, mild sweetness and a bright green colour to the soup.
Cucumbers
Contribute a fresh, tender texture and a light, cool flavour.
Demi-glace
Adds concentrated savoury depth and a richer colour to the cucumbers.
Sugar
Balances the savoury notes of the demi-glace and consommé with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Cucumber and peas soften and lose their fresh colour and texture when they sit in hot liquid, so the soup is best served as soon as it is assembled.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sugar):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Chestnutbetter flavor fit
  3. Sesamebetter flavor fit
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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