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Soup

Pea Soup

A soup of young green peas, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, mint, butter, salt, and pepper or cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pea Soup

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 ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Chop parsley and mint, then stir them over a gentle fire for nearly an hour.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon of salt and a good seasoning of white pepper or cayenne.

  3. Drain the mixture from the butter and add it to the strained stock.

  4. Boil gently until the butter rises to the surface and is cleared.

Finish and serve

  1. Add ½ to ¾ pint of boiled 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

Young green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, fresh flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onions
Build a savoury aromatic base that rounds out the soup's flavour.
Lettuces
Add bulk and a mild, cooked-down leafy flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the butter rises and is cleared. A gentle simmer lets the butter separate and rise so it can be skimmed off cleanly. A hard boil breaks the fat into the liquid, leaving the soup greasy and cloudy.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, cucumber, lettuce, onion, parsley, butter, white pepper):

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

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

More pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

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