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Petits Pois Aux Laitues a LA Franqaise

A French-style pea and lettuce stew made with butter, parsley, sugar, mint, and a flour-butter roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Petits Pois Aux Laitues a LA Franqaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the peas until tender, then strain off the water.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the peas with butter, chopped lettuce, parsley, sugar, salt, pepper, and mint.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix flour with fresh butter to form a paste, then add to the peas.

  4. Stir over heat for a few minutes while shaking the pan.

Serve

  1. Dish up, garnish with croutons, and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together622 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,483 recipes

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

  5. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,293 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young peas
Form the main body of the soup and give it its sweet, green flavour.
Cabbage lettuce
Adds leafy bulk and moisture that softens as the soup simmers.
Flour
Mixed with butter to form a paste that thickens the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste. Flour must be fully blended into the butter before it goes into the hot peas, and the soup must then be stirred over heat. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the cabbage

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

  1. Cucumberbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, lettuce, parsley, sugar, pepper, mint. 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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