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Green Peas Sovp, Without Meat

A green pea soup made without meat, simmered with butter, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, mint, and young peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce 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 ↓

Green Peas Sovp, Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Boil the peas in 3 quarts of water with salt and soda for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas and pound them in a mortar.

  3. Mix the peas with 5 pints of the boiling water.

  4. Put the mixture back on the fire.

  5. Stew gently for 15 minutes.

  6. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Cook the vegetables

  1. In a separate pan, simmer butter, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, parsley, and mint over low heat for 45 minutes.

  2. Stir occasionally and season with salt and white pepper or cayenne.

  3. Drain the vegetables from the butter and add to the strained stock.

  4. Boil gently until the butter rises to the surface.

Finish

  1. Add the young peas and serve immediately.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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
Break down during boiling and pounding to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the soup a smooth mouthfeel.
Onions
Release savoury aroma and sweetness as they simmer in the butter.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture through a fine sieve. Sieving removes skins and fibres left after pounding, so the soup becomes smooth rather than grainy. Skipping or rushing this step leaves a coarse texture that a sieve would otherwise remove.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, cucumber, lettuce, onion, parsley, white pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, cucumber, lettuce, onion, parsley, white 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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