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Green Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from shelled peas, meat, herbs, and thickened with flour, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Green Pea 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.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the peas in 2 quarts of water until soft.

  2. Mash the peas through a colander, discarding the skins.

  3. Return the pea puree to the pot with the piece of meat.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, and mint; remove herbs before serving.

  5. Thicken the soup with flour, egg, and milk as you would for chicken soup.

Make and add the marrow balls

  1. For marrow balls, mix beef marrow, flour, and salt. Add ice water to form a stiff paste and shape into marble-sized balls.

  2. Drop the balls into boiling soup, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + minttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together285 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled peas
Form the main body of the soup once boiled and mashed into a puree.
Flour
Thickens the soup and binds the marrow balls into a stiff paste.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the soup as it is stirred in.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the body of the thickened soup.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the marrow balls a tender, savory texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour, egg, and milk. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle if added to very hot liquid without first being tempered, so the mixture should be combined carefully and kept below a hard boil.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, thyme, parsley, mint, flour, egg):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, thyme, parsley, mint, flour, egg. 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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