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Peas Soup

A soup made from peas, water or meat broth, celery, salt, pepper, garnished with dried mint or parsley and served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pulp

  1. Simmer the water or meat liquor until the peas pulp.

  2. Strain through a coarse sieve.

  3. Return the pulp to the soup.

Season and thicken

  1. Add the celery or celery seed, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer for 45 minutes to thicken.

  3. Let stand covered for a few minutes.

  4. Remove the fat from the top.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with dried mint or parsley.

  2. Serve with diced toasted bread.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Celery + minttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together334 recipes

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

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Adds a savory, aromatic flavor that gives the soup its character.
Water or meat liquor
Serves as the cooking liquid that softens the peas and carries flavor through the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer for 45 minutes to thicken. Long, gentle simmering evaporates some water and concentrates the soup, while the broken-down peas release starch that helps it thicken. Too short a simmer leaves it thin, and too hard a boil can scorch the bottom or break the texture.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, celery, pepper, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, celery, pepper, bread. 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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