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Pea Soup, Green

A soup made from young peas, stock or water, and optional greens and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pea Soup, Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas.

  2. Place the shelled peas in cold water.

Make the stock

  1. Put the shells into a quart of stock or water with spinach, parsley, mint, and green onions.

  2. Boil the mixture for an hour.

  3. Strain the soup through a wire sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the strained soup to a boil.

  2. Add the peas.

  3. Cook until the peas are tender, about 20 minutes.

  4. If the soup is thin, add a little white roux to thicken.

  5. If the color is poor, add a small amount of spinach extract.

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 + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

  4. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 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

Young peas
Provide the main body, sweetness and green flavor of the soup.
White roux
Thickens the soup's liquid so it becomes more body-rich and less thin.
Spinach
Adds green color and a mild vegetal flavor to the stock.
Green onions
Add a mild onion aroma to the stock.

The step that matters

Boiling the shell stock for an hour. A long simmer extracts flavor from the pea shells and aromatics into the liquid. Boiling too hard or too long can dull the fresh green color, so keep it at a gentle, steady boil.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, parsley, mint, onion):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, parsley, mint, onion. 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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