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Soup

Green-Peas Soup

A soup made from old and young green peas, butter, water, onions, lettuce, spinach, and optional thickening with butter and flour.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine old peas, butter, water, lettuce leaves, onions, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew until you can pulp the peas.

  3. Add more water to the liquor, then add the hearts and tender stalks of the lettuces, young peas, spinach, and additional salt and pepper.

  4. Stew until soft.

Thicken and finish

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

  2. Before serving, boil shredded mint in the soup for flavor.

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. 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

Old peas
Break down when stewed to pulp and give the soup its body.
Young peas
Add fresh green flavour and a lighter texture once the soup is cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which carries flavour and smooths the soup.
Rice or wheat flour
Starch that swells when boiled, thickening the soup if it is too thin.
Onions
Build a savoury base of flavour as they stew with the peas.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked long enough in fat and liquid for its starch to swell and lose its raw taste. Boiling for the full time, rather than briefly, gives a smooth thickened soup instead of a floury, lumpy one.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, peas, lettuce, 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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