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Clear Pea Soup

A clear soup made with gravy, young peas, lettuce, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Clear Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 2 quarts of gravy in a pot.

  2. Add 1 quart of young peas, 1 chopped lettuce, and 1 small sprig of mint.

  3. Cook until the peas are tender.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavor of the other ingredients.
Young peas
Provide the main body, sweetness and green flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Cook until the peas are tender. Peas turn dull and mushy when overcooked, so check their texture rather than relying on a set time. Stopping once they are just tender keeps the color bright and the texture pleasant.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, mint):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, mint. 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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