Name: Summer Pea Soup
Ingredients: 1 peck of peas (about 9 quarts); 4 cups good stock; 1 cup young peas; 1 cup chopped lettuce; 1 cup small pieces of cucumber, fried to a light brown; 1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 to 3 teaspoons sugar

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Summer Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

Separate the old peas from the young ones.
Boil the old peas in good stock until tender.
Pass the boiled peas through a sieve and return them to the stock.

Finish and serve

Add the young peas, chopped lettuce, fried cucumber, mint, pepper, salt, and sugar.
Stir well and serve hot.

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.

Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,137 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together884 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together629 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

Old peas: Boiled until tender and sieved, they thicken the stock and give the soup its body.
Young peas: Added at the end without long boiling, they keep a fresh, bright pea flavour and texture.
Lettuce: Added raw at the end, it adds a mild, fresh vegetable note and softness.
Cucumber: Fried to a light brown, it adds savoury, toasted flavour and a firmer bite.
Sugar: Balances the savoury taste and rounds out the natural sweetness of the peas.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cucumber, mint, pepper, sugar):

Chickpeafits better
Lentilsfits about as well
Cashew nutfits about as well
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber, mint, pepper, sugar. 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.