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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, lettuce, onions, spinach, butter, mint, salt, stock, pepper, and sugar, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Make the pea base

  1. Melt the butter in a clean 3-quart saucepan.

  2. Add the shredded lettuce, onion, one part of the peas, mint, salt, and stock.

  3. Stew gently while stirring until the vegetables are soft enough to pass through a sieve.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a dish to separate tough parts.

Finish the soup

  1. Combine the pulp with 2 quarts of clear stock, pepper, pounded sugar, and more salt if needed.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim if necessary, then simmer.

  3. Boil the remaining peas in a saucepan of salted water with a small lump of sugar until done.

  4. Drain the peas and add them to the soup.

  5. Serve with snippets of bread and optionally add chopped mint.

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

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

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

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

  4. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 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

Green peas
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup once puréed.
Butter
Softens the vegetables gently and adds richness to the soup.
Lettuce
Adds sweetness and a soft, smooth texture when cooked down.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Onion
Builds a savoury aromatic base for the soup.

The step that matters

Stew gently while stirring until soft. Cooking the vegetables gently until fully soft lets them pass through a sieve smoothly. Heating too hard can scorch the butter and leave the vegetables unevenly cooked, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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