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Green Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with lamb and beef bones, green peas, and sweet cream.

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

Why it works: Lamb and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the lamb and beef bones and place them in a soup pot with 6 quarts of cold water.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of salt and bring to a gentle boil for 1 hour, skimming as needed.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the soaked peas, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and a few whole cloves.

  2. Let the soup boil gently for 3 hours, then remove the bones and strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  3. Before serving, stir in ½ pint of sweet cream.

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. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green or dry peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body and flavour.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Lamb and beef bones
Release gelatine and savoury flavour into the water, forming the base of the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering gently for 3 hours. A gentle simmer lets the peas soften and release starch without the soup scorching on the bottom or turning cloudy. A hard boil can break the peas apart unevenly and make the strained soup less smooth.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, peas, pepper, cream):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, peas, pepper, cream. 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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