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Pur£e of Green Peas

A creamy puree made from boiled green peas, lettuces, onions, mint, spinach, and butter, served with fried croutons.

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

Pur£e of Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Boil water, peas, lettuces, onions, mint, spinach, salt, and sugar for 1 hour.

  2. Strain and pound the vegetables in a mortar.

  3. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve and then a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Stir in butter and season with pepper and salt if needed.

  3. Simmer and 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, fresh green flavour of the puree.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel in the finished puree.
Lettuces
Contribute soft, mild vegetable bulk that thickens the puree when pounded and sieved.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a wire sieve and then a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibrous bits; sieving twice removes them, so the puree becomes smooth and cream-like rather than grainy.

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.

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