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Green Pea Soup

A soup of green peas, ham, and stock, sweetened with sugar and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Ham and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stew pan, combine green peas, diced ham, and cold water.

  2. Place over high heat, stirring occasionally until peas are very tender.

  3. Mix in flour, mashing peas against the sides of the pan.

  4. Add stock, sugar, pepper, and salt; boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup and serve.

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. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Peas + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Peas + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together402 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the body of the soup, breaking down into a thick puree when cooked and mashed.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the mashed peas, giving it body.
Lean ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the soup base.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and broth flavor for the soup.

The step that matters

Mix in flour, mashing peas against the sides of the pan. Flour stirred into hot peas can clump if added without enough mixing. Mashing the peas against the pan helps break them down so the flour blends in smoothly and the soup thickens evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, flour, meat, sugar, pepper):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour, meat, sugar, 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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