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Green Peas Soup

A soup made with cucumbers, lettuce, mint, onions, peas, parsley, and butter, simmered and thickened with butter and flour.

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

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine cucumbers, lettuce, mint, onions, pepper, salt, peas, and parsley with the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stew gently in their own juices for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour in boiling water and stew for 2 hours.

  4. Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour 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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body and fresh, mild flavour of the soup.
Lettuce
Adds bulk and soft body as it softens during the long stew.
Peas
Contribute sweetness and a thicker, starchy texture to the soup.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and release their sugars.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the soup.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the soup as the flour starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour before serving.. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid to swell and thicken evenly; adding it without enough heat or stirring can leave lumps or a thin soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, lettuce, mint, pepper, peas, parsley, butter. 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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