Skip to main content
Main

Geeen Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, lettuce, onion, cucumber, mint, butter, and flour, simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber 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 ↓

Geeen Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Reserve 1 quart of stock.

  2. Reserve ½ cup of peas.

  3. Combine the remaining stock and all vegetables in a pot.

  4. Simmer until tender.

  5. Press the mixture through a sieve into a clean pot.

  6. Add the reserved stock.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Mix the butter and flour together and add the mixture to the soup.

Serve

  1. Boil the reserved peas separately.

  2. Place the boiled peas in a serving bowl.

  3. Pour the soup over the peas.

  4. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 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. Mint + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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

Old peas
Give the soup its main body and bright green color and flavor.
Lettuce
Adds soft body and a mild, sweet vegetable flavor to the soup.
Butter and flour
Cooked together, they form a roux that thickens the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour together and add the mixture to the soup. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Blending it with butter first and stirring it in while the soup is hot helps it dissolve smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipes