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Green Pea Puree

A puree of green peas, lettuce, and onion in stock, thickened with rice flour and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pea pods.

Make the puree

  1. Boil the peas, half the pods, lettuce, onion, and stock in a pan until tender.

  2. Remove the lettuce, then pass the peas through a fine sieve.

  3. Add blended rice flour, season, and bring to a boil.

  4. Cook for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Place cream in a heated soup tureen, pour over the hot soup, and serve with croutons.

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

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

  2. Rice + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main body and flavour of the puree once cooked and sieved.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavour and smoothing the finished soup.
White stock
Forms the cooking liquid that carries flavour and makes the puree pourable.

The step that matters

Add the blended rice flour and bring to a boil. Rice flour must be fully blended into liquid before it goes in, and the soup must reach a boil so the starch thickens and cooks out any raw floury taste. Adding it lumpy or undercooking it leaves a grainy or pasty texture.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, rice, flour, lettuce):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, rice, flour, lettuce. 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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