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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from fresh green peas, lettuce, spinach, herbs, and butter, simmered and seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

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

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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pea base

  1. Boil the water with salt in a large saucepan.

  2. Skim the surface, then add the fresh green peas and cook until tender.

  3. Press the peas through a sieve into a bowl.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, combine the lettuce, spinach, parsley, mint, and onion with the butter.

  2. Stew the mixture gently for 30 minutes, then strain the butter.

  3. Add the pea pulp to the strained mixture and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the cooked young green peas.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, and serve hot. Optionally, add sliced cucumber for extra flavor.

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh green peas
Form the main body and sweet, earthy flavor of the soup when pressed into a purée.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the herbs and aromatics through the stew.
Lettuce hearts
Add soft, mild vegetable body and sweetness as they cook down into the soup.
Onion
Contributes savory aromatic depth as it softens gently in butter.
Spinach
Adds leafy, mildly bitter vegetable flavor and a green color to the soup.

The step that matters

Straining the butter after the gentle stew. The stewed vegetables must be separated from the butter before the pea pulp is added, so the soup stays smooth and the simmer does not turn greasy or grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, spinach, parsley, mint, butter, 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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