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Soup

Green Peas Soup

A soup made from young and large green peas, turnips, lettuce, onions, butter, veal stock, thickened with flour and water, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the young green peas, turnips, lettuce, and onions.

  2. In a pot, melt the butter and stew the vegetables until nearly done.

Make the soup

  1. In another pot, boil the large green peas in veal stock until tender.

  2. Strain and pound the peas, preserving the liquid.

  3. Rub the peas through a fine sieve and add the pulp and liquid to the stewed vegetables.

  4. Add a little flour and water to thicken, then season with pepper, salt, and sugar if desired.

  5. Boil the mixture together for 30 minutes, skimming as necessary.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add the pulp of boiled parsley for color.

  2. Cut the bread into thin pieces, dry them by the fire, and serve on a plate.

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young green peas
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup as they cook down into the pulp.
Large fresh green peas
Boiled in stock and pressed through a sieve to give the soup its smooth, thick body.
Veal stock
Supplies the savoury liquid base that the peas cook in and the soup is built on.
Butter
Melts to cook the vegetables gently, adding richness and carrying flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a fuller, more cohesive texture.
Turnips
Stewed in butter until soft, adding sweetness and body to the soup base.

The step that matters

Rub the peas through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks them into a smooth pulp that thickens the liquid. Leftover skins or lumps left behind make the soup grainy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, lettuce, onion, butter, veal, flour, pepper. 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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