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Green Pea Soup

A green pea soup with lettuce, cucumber, mint, onion, parsley, butter, and thin gravy, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber 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 Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped lettuce, sliced cucumbers, peas, mint, onion, and parsley.

  2. Add the fresh butter and stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour in the thin gravy and stew for 2 hours.

  4. Thicken the soup with a piece of butter rolled in flour.

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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Lettuces
Forms the body of the soup and softens into a smooth, green base as it stews.
Peas
Provide the main flavour and colour, and thicken the soup as they break down.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a rounder, silkier mouthfeel.
Thin gravy
Supplies the liquid that the vegetables stew in, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when kneaded with butter and stirred in, giving it body.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid to avoid raw, floury taste and lumps. Stirring it in while the soup is hot lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

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