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Green Peas Soup

A soup made from young and large green peas, turnips, lettuce, onions, veal stock, butter, and flour, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine the young green peas, diced turnips, sliced lettuces, and chopped onions with the butter.

  2. Cook until nearly done.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the large green peas in veal stock until tender.

  2. Strain and pound the peas, reserving the liquid.

  3. Rub the pounded peas through a fine sieve.

  4. Add the pulp and reserved liquid to the cooked vegetables.

  5. Stir in a little flour and water to thicken.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, and sugar if desired.

  7. Boil for 30 minutes.

  8. Skim the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the pulp of boiled parsley for color before serving.

  2. Cut the bread into thin slices.

  3. Dry the slices by the fire.

  4. Serve alongside the soup.

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 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 green peas
Provide the main green vegetable body and sweet, fresh flavor of the soup.
Large green peas
Simmered in stock and pounded to create a smooth, thick pulp that gives body.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture as they cook down into the base.
Onions
Build savory aroma and flavor as they soften slowly in butter.
Butter
Carries flavor from the aromatics and adds richness to the soup.
Veal stock
Cooks the peas and supplies savory depth and body to the liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and water. Flour must be stirred in smoothly and given time to cook through, or it leaves a raw starchy taste and lumps. Boiling for 30 minutes afterward helps the starch fully gelatinize and the soup thicken evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, lettuce, onion, butter, veal, flour, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, lettuce, onion, butter, veal, flour, 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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