Skip to main content
Main

Spring Soup

A light soup made with green peas, onion, broth, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the base

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent.

  3. Stir in the peas and cook for 2 minutes.

Simmer and blend

  1. Pour in the broth and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Blend the soup until smooth, then season with salt and pepper.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Peas + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 the sweet, fresh green flavor of the soup.
Onion
Softens and turns sweet as it cooks, building the soup's base flavor.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the peas and sets the soup's consistency.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps soften the onion gently.

The step that matters

Simmer for 15 minutes. Keep the simmer gentle rather than a hard boil. Prolonged, vigorous boiling dulls the bright green color of peas and can overcook them, so the finished soup tastes flatter.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, chicken, 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.

More spring soup recipes

Thick 3 See all 29 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes