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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, onion, herbs, and flour, served with toasted bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the green peas in water until fully cooked.

  2. Strain the peas, returning the liquid to the pot.

  3. Rub the peas through a sieve.

  4. In a pan, fry the chopped onion in lard until soft but not browned.

  5. Add the onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, and salt to the soup.

  6. Stir the flour into the boiling soup.

Serve

  1. Serve with cubes of toasted bread.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Break down into a thick purée that gives the soup its body and colour.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it boils, giving it a smoother body.
Lard
Carries the onion's flavour and softens it gently without browning.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if dropped in dry or added to cold liquid. Stirring it into boiling soup spreads it evenly so the starch can gelatinise and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, flour, bread):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, flour, bread. 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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