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Green Peas Soup

A soup made with green peas, lettuce, onions, butter, and optional flour or rice for thickening.

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

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

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the old peas, butter, water, lettuce leaves, onions, salt, and pepper; stew until the peas can be pulped.

  2. Add the cooking liquid, more water, lettuce hearts, young peas, spinach, and additional salt and pepper; stew until soft.

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

Serve

  1. Before serving, add 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.

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

Peas
Pulped old peas give the soup its body, while young peas add sweetness and a fresh texture.
Lettuce
Lettuce leaves and hearts add a gentle vegetable flavour and help build the soup's base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour or rice
Starch thickens the liquid as it boils, giving the soup a fuller body.

The step that matters

Boiling the butter and flour mixture. Starch granules swell and thicken the liquid only when heated enough, so the mixture must boil for the full time or the soup stays thin and may taste floury.

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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