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Green Peas Soup

A hearty soup made from green peas, ham, veal, vegetables, and spices, finished with toasted bread and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the green peas until soft.

  2. Strain the peas and work through a fine sieve.

  3. In the water used for boiling the peas, add ham, veal, beet leaves, turnip, carrots, and more water.

  4. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  5. Strain the liquid into a bowl and mix with the pea pulp.

Season and finish the soup

  1. Squeeze boiled spinach through a cloth to extract juice and add to the soup for color.

  2. Gently boil the mixture to remove the spinach taste.

  3. Add sliced celery and sugar.

Fry the garnishes and serve

  1. Cut bread and bacon into small squares and fry in fresh butter until light brown.

  2. Slice the lettuce and fry it after the bread and bacon.

  3. Combine everything in the tureen.

  4. Add boiled young peas and pour the soup over the mixture.

  5. Serve with toasted bread and dry powdered mint.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 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, color and pea flavor of the soup once pulped.
Ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Veal knuckle
Contributes gelatin and body to the broth during long simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetable flavor to the soup.
Bread
Fried in butter, it browns and adds crisp texture as a garnish.

The step that matters

Gently boil the mixture to remove the spinach taste. Spinach juice has a raw, grassy flavor that fades with gentle heat. Boiling too hard or too briefly can leave it noticeable, while overcooking may dull the soup's bright green color.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, ham, veal, turnip, carrot, spinach, celery):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, ham, veal, turnip, carrot, spinach, celery. 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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