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Gkeex-peas Soup

A pea soup with lettuce, onions, butter, and optional flour, served with mint garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Gkeex-peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Make the soup

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

  2. Stew until the peas can be pulped.

  3. Add more water, lettuce hearts, young peas, spinach, and additional salt and pepper.

  4. Stew until soft.

  5. If the soup is too thin, mix 1-2 ounces of butter with flour or rice and boil for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add finely shredded mint to 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. 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

Old peas
Break down when stewed, giving the soup its body and thickness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour or rice
Thickens the soup as its starch swells during boiling.
Young peas
Add fresh, sweet flavour and a tender bite added late in cooking.
Spinach
Adds a leafy, earthy flavour and soft texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and flour or rice. Starch must be boiled long enough to swell and thicken the soup; adding it without enough boiling leaves the soup thin and possibly floury-tasting.

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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