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Green Peas Soup

A soup made from young and old peas, butter, water, lettuce, onions, spinach, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup

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 ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Shell the peas, separating the old from the young ones.

  2. Combine the old peas, butter, water, lettuce leaves, onions, salt, and pepper in a pot.

  3. Cook until the peas can be pulped.

Finish the soup

  1. Add more water to the pot along with the young peas, lettuce hearts, spinach, and additional salt and pepper.

  2. Cook until soft.

  3. Mix 1 ounce of butter with 1 tablespoon of rice or wheat flour and add the mixture to the soup.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Add finely chopped mint to the soup before serving.

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. 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. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pepper + spinachtop 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 flavor of the soup.
Old peas
Break down when pulped to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture.
Rice or wheat flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter, giving a smoother, heavier consistency.
Lettuce
Adds moisture and a mild, sweet vegetal flavor as it softens.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour mixed with butter should be added to the hot soup and boiled so the starch swells and thickens it fully. Adding it cold or unmixed can leave lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lettuce, onion, pepper, peas, spinach, rice. 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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