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Soup

A Cheap Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, cucumbers, lettuces, onions, and herbs, simmered in a buttered broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Cheap Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea stock

  1. Wash the pea shells thoroughly and add them to 2 quarts of boiling salted water.

  2. Cook for 20-30 minutes until tender.

  3. Strain the cooked shells.

  4. Press the pods with a wooden spoon to extract the liquid.

  5. In a clean saucepan, bring the strained liquid to a boil.

Make the soup

  1. Add the full-grown peas, cucumbers, lettuces, and thinly sliced onion.

  2. Sauté the onion in butter for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the sautéed onion to the soup.

  4. Add parsley and mint if desired.

  5. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

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. 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

Pea shells
Simmered in salted water, they build the flavorful base liquid for the soup.
Full-grown peas
Add body and starch that thicken the soup and give it a rich pea flavor.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness to the finished soup.
Onion
Cooked slowly in butter, it softens and sweetens, adding savory depth.
Lettuces
Soften during simmering, adding body and a mild, fresh green flavor.
Cucumbers
Add mild, fresh flavor and moisture that lightens the soup.

The step that matters

Sautéing the onion in butter. Cooking the onion gently over low heat softens it and draws out sweetness without browning. Too much heat can scorch the butter and onion, leaving bitter, burnt flavors that carry into the soup.

Swap the mint

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