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Green Pease Soup

A hearty soup of green peas, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, cloves, mace, cabbage lettuce, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Green Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Shell the peas, separating old from young.

  2. Add old peas to boiling water with onions, turnips, carrots, celery, cloves, mace, and cabbage lettuces.

  3. Stew for 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the old green peas to the strained liquid and boil until tender.

  2. Rub the peas through a colander with a wooden spoon.

  3. Boil the young peas in the soup for 15 minutes.

  4. Serve in a tureen with 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Old green peas
Break down when rubbed through a colander, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base flavour as they stew in the liquid.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and colour to the stock while stewing.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury depth to the stock during the long stew.
Cabbage lettuces
Contribute vegetable flavour and body to the stewed liquid.
Turnips
Add earthy sweetness and body to the stock.

The step that matters

Rub the peas through a colander. Pressing the cooked peas forces their starch-rich pulp through the mesh, which thickens the soup. Pushing too little leaves it thin and grainy, and too much can release bitter skin bits.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, carrot, celery, clove, cabbage, lettuce):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, celery, clove, cabbage, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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