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Ahovmer Gbsbk Peas Soup

A hearty pea soup made with green peas, bacon or mutton, spinach, onions, lettuce, mint, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Ahovmer Gbsbk Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Shell the peas and place the shells in a gallon of cold water with a piece of bacon or mutton.

  2. Boil until very soft, then strain the liquid through a fine sieve, bruising the shells with a spoon.

Finish the soup

  1. Pound the spinach in a mortar, mix with some of the strained liquid, and strain again.

  2. Boil the spinach mixture with the remaining liquid for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the quart of peas and cook until tender.

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. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 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

Green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavour of the soup.
Spinach
Adds green colour and a mild, earthy flavour to the soup.
Bacon or mutton
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Boil the stock until very soft. Boiling the pea shells long enough extracts their flavour and softens them so the straining yields a smooth, well-flavoured liquid.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, mutton, spinach, onion, butter, lettuce, 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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