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For Green Pea Soup

A soup made from shelled peas, mint, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

For Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the peas with the mint in 3 quarts of boiling soup stock for 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture, rubbing the peas through to extract all substance.

  3. Return the strained soup to the kettle and heat.

Finish and season

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl and gradually mix in a few spoonfuls of the hot soup until smooth.

  2. Stir the butter mixture back into the soup.

  3. Season with pepper and salt if needed.

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

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

  2. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled peas
Provide the main flavour and body, thickening the soup when rubbed through a strainer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter with hot soup. Adding cold butter straight into hot soup can separate or leave greasy specks. Blending it first with a few spoonfuls of hot soup until smooth lets the fat emulsify evenly before it is stirred back in.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, 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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