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Soup

Green-Pea Soup for Lent

A pea soup made with old and young peas, lettuce hearts, spinach, onion, mint, butter, and flour, served with fried bread.

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 ↓

Green-Pea Soup for Lent

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil 1 quart of old green peas and a sprig of mint in 2 quarts of water until they can be pulped through a sieve.

  2. Add 1 pint of young peas, the hearts of 2 lettuces, 1 handful of chopped spinach and 1 onion.

  3. Add 3 ounces of melted butter mixed with enough flour to prevent boiling.

  4. Combine all ingredients and boil the soup for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread.

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. 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. 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 green peas
Break down when boiled and pulped, forming the thick body of the soup.
Young peas
Add fresh pea flavour and a lighter texture to the pulped base.
Lettuces
Contribute soft, mild leafy body and a gentle vegetal sweetness as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour (in the method)
Mixed with the butter to thicken the soup and help prevent boiling over.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour mixed into melted butter must be fully blended before it goes in, or it clumps. Stirring it into the hot soup as it boils keeps it smooth and helps thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, mint, butter, spinach, pepper. 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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