Skip to main content
Main

Green-Peas Soup

A soup made from old and young peas, lettuce, onions, butter, and seasonings, thickened with optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Green-Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine old peas, butter, water, lettuce leaves, onions, salt, and pepper. Stew until you can pulp the peas.

  2. Add more water, young peas, lettuce hearts, spinach, and additional salt and pepper. Stew until soft.

Thicken and finish

  1. If the soup is too thin, mix butter with flour and boil for 30 minutes to thicken.

  2. Before serving, boil shredded mint in the soup.

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. 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

Old peas
Break down into a pulp that gives the soup its body and thickness.
Young peas
Add fresh green flavour and a tender texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Onions
Build a savoury, aromatic base as they soften during stewing.
Lettuce
Adds gentle sweetness and moisture as it cooks down into the soup.
Rice or wheat flour
Starch that thickens the liquid when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked in fat before it meets liquid so it thickens smoothly without lumps. Boiling it fully lets the starch swell and lose its raw taste.

Swap the mint

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

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

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes