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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, lettuce, spinach, mint, butter, flour, and water, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the purée

  1. Combine 1 pint of peas, 1 oz. of butter, mint, spinach, and half the lettuces in a stewpan; stir well and steam for 10 minutes without browning.

  2. Add cold water and simmer until tender; pass through a fine sieve, rubbing as much of the peas through as possible.

Thicken and finish

  1. Melt 1 oz. of butter in a pan, stir in flour, and add the pea puree; bring to a boil.

  2. Add the remaining boiled peas and lettuce to the soup; boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve with croutons of fried bread; for a thinner soup, add more 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.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Peas + minttop 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. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Green peas
Form the main body and flavour of the soup once puréed.
Flour
Thickens the purée into a smooth, body-rich soup as it boils.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted into the soup base.
Lettuces
Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the purée and final soup.

The step that matters

Steaming the peas without browning. Gentle steaming with a little butter softens the peas and keeps their bright green colour. Browning would dull the colour and add a toasted flavour that clashes with a delicate pea soup.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, spinach, butter, 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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