Skip to main content
Soup

Mint and Pea Soup

A soup made with mint, peas, onions, stock, and optional flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mint and Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine mint, young onions, and water in a pot.

  2. Stew until tender.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add stock, salt, and sugar.

  5. Boil the soup.

  6. If the soup is not thick enough, mix in flour and butter.

Add the vegetables

  1. Boil young peas with chopped lettuce and a little mint just before serving.

  2. Pound spinach in a mortar.

  3. Squeeze through a cloth to extract juice.

  4. Soak old dried blue peas overnight.

  5. Boil in water.

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. Mint + peastop 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. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

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

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Young peas
Add body and a sweet, fresh flavour to the soup.
Stock
Provides the main liquid and savoury depth of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when the consistency is too thin.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the thickened soup.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, flour, butter, peas, lettuce, spinach. 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.

You might also like

Meatless Green Pea SoupMeatless Green Pea Soup22 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipes