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Pea Soup

A soup made with green peas, butter, ham, onions, lettuce, French rolls, spinach, sugar, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a pot, then add the ham, 1 quart of peas, onions, and lettuces with 1 pint of stock. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the remaining stock and the crumb of the French rolls, then boil for another hour.

Add spinach and finish

  1. Boil the spinach until tender, then squeeze it dry.

  2. Pass the soup and spinach through a sieve to combine and color the soup.

  3. Boil a pint of young peas separately and add them to the soup along with the sugar. Bring to a boil and serve.

  4. If needed, add salt to taste.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Onion + spinachtop 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

Green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor from the aromatics into the soup.
Onions
Build savory depth as they soften slowly in the butter.
Lettuces
Add soft body and a mild, fresh vegetal note as they cook down.
French rolls
Their crumb thickens the soup, giving it a fuller, smoother body.
Spinach
Adds a deeper green color and earthy flavor when sieved into the soup.

The step that matters

Passing the soup through a sieve. Sieving breaks down the cooked peas, lettuce and spinach into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and uneven in color.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, ham, lettuce, spinach, sugar):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, ham, lettuce, spinach, sugar. 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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