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Potage a LA Puree De Pois, or Pea Soup

A pea soup made with fresh peas, cabbage, onions, herbs, cucumbers, and consomme, served with toast squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potage a LA Puree De Pois, or Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine peas, lettuces, green onions, parsley, mint, carrot, and salt in a large pot of boiling water. Boil until tender, then drain in a sieve.

  2. Melt butter over low heat in a clean pot.

  3. Add peas and a small ladle of consomme to the butter, cooking until they thicken and are ready to pass through a fine sieve.

  4. Pass the peas through the fine sieve into a soup pot.

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Fry diced cucumbers in clarified butter until golden brown, then drain.

  2. Simmer the drained cucumbers in a pint of consomme until reduced by half.

Finish and serve

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, heat the soup over low heat, stirring until it boils.

  2. If the soup is too thick, add more consomme to achieve a creamy consistency.

  3. Stir in cucumbers, sugar, and salt to taste 15 minutes before serving.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises.

  5. Serve with toast squares in the tureen.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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

Peas
Form the body of the soup, thickening into a smooth purée when passed through a sieve.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Consomme
Provides savoury liquid that loosens the purée to a creamy consistency.
Cucumbers
Add texture and a light fresh flavour once fried and simmered.
Cabbage lettuces
Add green body and mild flavour as they cook down with the peas.

The step that matters

Passing the peas through a fine sieve. Peas must be cooked until fully tender and then pressed through a fine sieve to break down their cell walls, producing a smooth texture. Undercooked or unstrained peas leave a grainy, lumpy soup.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, cabbage, lettuce, onion, parsley, carrot, butter. 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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