Potage de Laitue aux Petits Pois

A gentle, pale-green French soup of butterhead lettuce and young peas stewed in butter with spring onion, blended smooth and finished with a little cream, the thrifty potage of the gardener with more lettuce than the table can eat raw

Origin: France

From the journey of Lettuce.

Potage de laitue is the soup that the French kitchen garden invented to answer a happy problem: what to do with the glut of lettuce that comes on all at once in early summer and runs to seed faster than the salad bowl can keep pace. Rather than waste the bolting heads and the coarse outer leaves, the cook sweats them in butter with spring onions and a handful of young peas, simmers them briefly in stock, and blends the lot to a smooth, pale-green velvet finished with a swirl of cream. Cooking transforms the lettuce entirely: its faint raw bitterness mellows into a delicate, almost grassy sweetness, and the peas lend body, colour, and a deeper green. Light and elegant, the soup belongs to the same family of refined French vegetable potages as the better-known watercress and sorrel soups, and it can be served hot in the cool of an early-summer evening or chilled, like a vichyssoise, in the heat of high summer. Frugal in its origins yet delicate enough for a fine table, it is the perfect expression of the French habit of treating lettuce as a vegetable to be cooked, not merely a leaf to be dressed.

Ingredients

The Soup

  • 40 g butter
  • 6 spring onions, sliced (or 1 small leek, white part only)
  • 2 large heads butterhead lettuce, coarsely shredded (about 400g)
  • 250 g podded fresh or frozen peas
  • 1 medium floury potato, peeled and diced (optional, for body)
  • 800 ml chicken or vegetable stock
  • 4 tbsp double cream, plus extra to serve
  • salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste

To Finish

  • 1 tbsp chopped fresh chervil or mint, to garnish

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the spring onions and the diced potato, if using, and sweat gently for 6 to 8 minutes until soft but not coloured.
  2. Add the shredded lettuce and stir until it wilts down completely, about 3 minutes.
  3. Pour in the stock, bring to the boil, and add the peas. Simmer for just 8 to 10 minutes (a few minutes longer if using a potato), until everything is tender. Do not overcook, or the bright green will fade.
  4. Blend the soup until completely smooth with a stick blender or in a jug blender. For the finest texture, pass it through a sieve.
  5. Return to the pan, stir in the cream, and reheat gently without boiling. Season with salt and white pepper. Serve hot or thoroughly chilled, with a swirl of cream and a scattering of chervil or mint.

Notes

Use up the coarser outer leaves and bolting hearts here; their slight bitterness disappears with cooking. A small handful of fresh mint blended in at the end echoes the classic pea-and-mint pairing. For a vegetarian or vegan soup, use vegetable stock and replace the cream with a little oat cream or simply an extra knob of butter. The potato is optional but gives a fuller, more velvety body.

The Gastrographer

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