Skip to main content
Main

Puree of Green Peas

A smooth puree made from boiled green peas, lettuce hearts, onions, mint, spinach, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Puree of Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Boil the peas, lettuce hearts, green onions, mint leaves, and spinach in 2 quarts of water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Pound the strained mixture in a mortar.

  4. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve, then through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add enough broth from boiling to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  2. Stir in the butter.

  3. Season with pepper and additional salt if needed.

  4. Simmer briefly.

  5. Serve with fried croutons.

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 + 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

Young peas
Provide the main body and sweet, green flavor of the puree.
Lettuce hearts
Add soft, mild body that helps the puree thicken when pounded and sieved.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and a rich finish.
Green onions
Contribute mild savory aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Sieving to a smooth texture. Pounding and passing the mixture through a wire sieve and then a fine sieve breaks down and removes fibrous pieces. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy texture rather than a smooth, cream-like puree.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipes