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Grbbn Peas Soup

A soup made from old and young green peas, water, bread crust, onions, mint, and buttered lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Grbbn Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine the old green peas, water, bread crust, onions, mint, salt, and pepper in a pot.

  2. Boil until the peas are perfectly soft, then strain through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Prepare the stewed lettuces in butter.

  2. Add the boiled young green peas, spinach juice, and pea pod juice to the soup.

  3. Boil everything together before serving.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Old green peas
Break down into soft pulp that gives the soup its body and thickness.
Young green peas
Add fresh, bright pea flavour and a lighter texture to the finished soup.
Lettuces
Stewed in butter, they add a soft, mellow vegetable flavour and body.
Onions
Release sweet, savoury aromatics as they cook into the broth.

The step that matters

Boil until the peas are perfectly soft, then strain. Peas must be fully softened so they break down completely; under-cooked peas leave a grainy texture that straining cannot fully remove, while the strained liquid gives the soup its smooth body.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, bread, mint, pepper, lettuce, butter, spinach):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, bread, mint, pepper, lettuce, butter, spinach. 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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