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Green Peas Soup, Without Meat

A green pea soup made with boiled peas, butter, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, mint, and young peas, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup, Without Meat

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup, Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Boil the peas in 3 quarts of water with salt for about 30 minutes.

  2. Drain and pound the peas, then mix with 5 pints of the boiling water.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Sauté the vegetables

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and sauté the cucumbers, lettuce hearts, onions, parsley, and mint for about 1 hour.

Finish the soup

  1. Season with salt and white pepper or cayenne to taste.

  2. Drain the vegetables from the butter and add them to the strained pea stock.

  3. Bring to a gentle boil until the butter rises to the surface.

  4. Add the young peas and serve immediately.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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

Peas
Pureed peas give the soup its body and thick, sweet base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the soup.
Onions
Softened in butter, they build a savoury, aromatic base.
Lettuce hearts
Cooked gently, they turn soft and add a mild, sweet flavour.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic herbal note to the soup.

The step that matters

Sautéing the vegetables in butter. The vegetables should soften gently in the butter without browning. Browning would change the colour and flavour of the pale, delicate soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, cucumber, lettuce, onion, parsley, mint. 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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