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Green Peas Soup, Without Meat

A soup made from boiled green peas, blended with vegetable stock and sautéed cucumbers, lettuces, onions, parsley, and mint, finished with young peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup, Without Meat

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce 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 Peas Soup, Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pea base

  1. Boil the peas in 3 quarts of water until tender, then drain.

  2. Pound the peas in a mortar and mix with 5 pints of the boiling water.

  3. Return the mixture to the heat and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Sauté the vegetables

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and sauté the cucumbers, lettuces, onions, parsley, and mint for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  2. Season with salt and white pepper or cayenne.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the vegetables from the butter and add them to the strained pea stock.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil until the butter rises to the surface.

  3. Add the young peas and serve immediately.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 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. Peas + lettucetop 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

Large peas
Form the thick body of the soup once boiled, pounded and pressed through a sieve.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the sautéed vegetables and adds richness to the finished soup.
Cucumbers
Add a cool, mild vegetable flavour and moisture to the soup base.
Lettuces
Soften during sautéing and add a gentle, sweet vegetable note with body.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften slowly in the butter.
Young peas
Add fresh pea flavour and texture at the end, since they are added after straining.

The step that matters

Pressing the pea mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding and sieving breaks down the cooked peas into a smooth, even purée. Skipping or rushing this step leaves grainy skins and fibres in the soup, giving a coarse texture.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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