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To Jiew Peas with Lettuces

A soup of peas, lettuce, gravy, butter, flour, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Jiew Peas with Lettuces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas.

  2. Boil the peas in salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the peas in a sieve.

  4. Slice the lettuce.

  5. Fry the lettuce in butter until wilted.

Make the soup

  1. In a tossing pan, combine the peas, lettuce, gravy, pepper, and salt.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

  3. Add the chopped mint.

  4. Serve in a soup dish.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh peas
Form the main body of the soup and give it its sweet, vegetable flavour.
Lettuce
Wilts in butter to add gentle body and a mild, earthy sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when frying the lettuce and thickening the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid with butter into a smoother, more body-rich soup.
Gravy
Adds savoury depth and liquid that helps bind the peas and lettuce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in the fat and stirred into the hot liquid so it hydrates evenly; added too cold or unmixed, it forms lumps and leaves the soup pasty.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, butter, pepper, flour. 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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