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Green Pea Soup

A soup of green peas, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, mint, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the cucumbers. Shred the hearts of the lettuces. Thinly slice the onions.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine cucumbers, lettuces, onions, parsley, and mint.

  2. Cook over gentle heat for nearly an hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add salt and a good seasoning of white pepper or cayenne.

  4. Drain the mixture from the butter and add it to the strained stock.

  5. Let it boil gently until the butter rises to the surface.

  6. Add ½ to ¾ pint of 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

Green peas
Form the base of the soup and give it body and its green colour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a silky mouthfeel.
Lettuce hearts
Contribute soft, mild vegetable body that thickens the soup as it cooks.
Cucumbers
Add fresh, mild vegetable flavour and moisture to the soup.

The step that matters

Letting the butter boil gently until it rises. Boiling gently lets the butter separate and rise to the surface so it can be skimmed off cleanly. Boiling hard can emulsify the fat into the liquid and make the soup greasy.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, cucumber, lettuce, onion, parsley, butter, white pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

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