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Soup

Green-Peas Soup

A soup made from green peas, lettuce, onions, and optional butter, rice, or wheat, garnished with mint.

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 427 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green-Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas.

  2. Separate the old peas from the young ones.

Make the soup

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

  2. Simmer until the peas can be pulped.

  3. Add more water.

  4. Add the hearts and tender stalks of the lettuce.

  5. Add the young peas.

  6. Add the spinach.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

  8. Stew until everything is soft.

  9. If the soup is too thin, mix in butter with rice or wheat.

  10. Simmer for another half hour.

  11. Boil chopped mint in the soup before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together427 recipes

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

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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 simmered, pulping to give the soup its body.
Young peas
Add fresh pea flavour and a bright, tender texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Rice or wheat
Starch that thickens the soup when mixed in with butter.
Onions
Build a savoury base of flavour as they soften in the soup.

The step that matters

Thinning the soup with butter and rice or wheat. Starch thickens liquid as it heats, but added directly it can clump. Mixing it with butter first helps it disperse evenly so the soup thickens smoothly rather than becoming lumpy.

Flavor stand-ins for the mint

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

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lettuce, onion, pepper, peas, spinach, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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