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Green-pea Soup

A soup made from peas, lettuce, herbs, leek, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Green-pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add the shelled peas, lettuce, parsley, mint, leek, and baking soda.

  3. Cook for about 20 minutes until the peas are tender.

  4. Reserve a few peas for garnish, then strain the soup through a sieve to remove solids.

  5. Return the strained soup to the pot, add milk, sugar, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil again.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the reserved peas and serve with croutons of fried 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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Freshly gathered peas
Provide the main body, sweet flavour and bright green colour of the soup.
Lettuce
Adds soft, mild body and moisture that blends smoothly into the broth.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the strained soup.
Leek
Contributes a mild onion-like aroma and savoury depth to the base.
Baking soda
Helps the peas keep a bright green colour during cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the peas until tender. Cooking long enough softens the peas fully so the straining step yields a smooth soup. Overcooking can dull the bright green colour, while undercooking leaves grainy texture.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, lettuce, parsley, milk, leek, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, parsley, milk, leek, sugar, 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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