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Green Pea Soup

A soup made with lean beef, green peas, water, rice flour, salt, pepper, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Peas and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,434 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the empty pods of peas in the water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain out the pods.

  3. Add the beef.

  4. Boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

  5. Half an hour before serving, remove the meat.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the peas.

  2. Twenty minutes later, add the rice flour.

  3. Stir frequently to prevent burning.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar if desired.

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. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 vegetable body and sweet, grassy flavor of the soup.
Lean beef
Adds savory meaty flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a fuller body.

The step that matters

Stirring while the rice flour thickens. Starch settles and scorches on the bottom of the pot when it thickens, so frequent stirring keeps the soup smooth and prevents a burnt taste.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, flour, pepper, 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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