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To Make Pea Soup

A pea soup made with dried peas, broth, rice, eggs, oil, vinegar, gherkins, capers, parsley, shallots, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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To Make Pea Soup

Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Make Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the peas in clean cold water.

  2. Boil the peas in a pan until soft.

  3. Pass the peas through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the peas to the strong broth and mix in the cooked rice.

  2. Beat the egg yolk and add it to the soup, heating gently without boiling.

Make the Sauce Tartare

  1. For Sauce Tartare, blend the hard‑boiled egg yolk with the two raw eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add salt and pepper, then slowly drizzle in the oil while stirring continuously.

  3. Alternate adding vinegar while stirring until well combined.

  4. Mix in the chopped gherkins, capers, parsley, and shallots.

  5. Add French mustard and Cayenne pepper 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. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 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

Dried peas
Cooks into a soft purée that gives the soup its body and thickness.
Cooked rice
Adds starch that helps thicken the soup and make it smoother.
Egg yolk
Thickens the soup gently as it heats, giving a richer texture.
Raw eggs
Bind with the oil to form a stable, creamy sauce base.
Oil
Adds richness and, emulsified with the eggs, gives the sauce its smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk into the soup without boiling. Egg proteins set when they get too hot, so boiling can curdle the yolk into lumps. Heating gently lets it thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, vinegar, capers, parsley, shallot, mustard):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, vinegar, capers, parsley, shallot, mustard. 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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