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Dried Green Pea Soup

A soup made from soaked split green peas, butter, lettuce, spinach juice for color, thickened with butter and flour, seasoned with pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Dried Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the split green peas in soft water with a walnut-sized piece of butter until soft.

  2. Pulp the soaked peas through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Add boiling water to the pulped peas to create the soup.

  2. Add the lettuce to the soup.

  3. Color the soup with spinach juice.

  4. Simmer the soup until ready.

  5. Thicken the soup with butter and flour.

  6. Season the soup with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sugar.

  7. Remove the lettuce 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.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Walnut + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together221 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Split green peas
Form the body of the soup, thickening it as they break down when pulped.
Lettuce
Adds a mild, fresh vegetable flavour while the soup simmers, then is removed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a fuller body.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, butter, lettuce, spinach, flour, pepper, sugar):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, butter, lettuce, spinach, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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