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Rice and Pea Soup

A soup made with dried green peas, rice, stock, salt, pepper, and served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,434 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice and Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the dried green peas in one pot until tender.

  2. In another pot, boil the rice until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the peas and rice in a pot with the soup stock or mutton broth.

  2. Bring to a boil, season with salt and pepper, and serve with bits of toast.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Peas + muttontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 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

Dried green peas
Break down into a thick, hearty body that gives the soup its main substance.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens, adding body and thickening the soup.
Soup stock or mutton broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peasthe original
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Lima beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, mutton, 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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