Skip to main content
Main

A Very Good Green Pease Soup, Maigre

A soup of green peas, vegetables, and butter, simmered together and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 427 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Very Good Green Pease Soup, Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Dissolve the bread in water.

  2. Shell the peas, keeping old and young separate.

  3. Boil the old peas in the bread water until tender, then pulp them through a colander while warm.

  4. Set the pulp aside and retain the water.

  5. In the retained water, boil the young peas with sweet herbs, cloves, mace, white pepper, and salt.

Make the soup

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the chopped lettuces, spinach, parsley, onions, and cucumbers.

  2. Stew the vegetables in the butter until tender, then transfer them to the boiling pea water.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, then add the reserved pulped peas and bread, boiling for a short time longer.

  4. Adjust thickness with additional water as needed.

  5. Before serving, stir in a few ounces of butter.

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,293 recipes

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Clove + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavour of the soup when pulped.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, and carries flavour from the stewed vegetables.
Bread
Thickens the soup and helps give it a smooth, body-rich texture when pulped in.
Lettuces
Softened in butter, they contribute gentle sweetness and moisture to the soup.
Spinach
Softened in butter, it adds earthy flavour and a deeper green colour.
Sweet herbs
Infused into the boiling pea water to add aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Pulping the old peas while warm. Pulping while warm lets the starchy peas break down easily into a smooth purée; once cooled they firm up and resist passing through a colander, leaving a grainy texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, bread, clove, mace, butter, lettuce, spinach):

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, bread, clove, mace, butter, lettuce, spinach. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes