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An Excellent Green Peas Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, stock, sugar, and optional fried bread.

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

Why it works: Peas and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

An Excellent Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Boil the peas with the carbonate of soda until tender, about 25 to 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas and add them to the boiling stock.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a clean pan.

  2. Bring to a boil, add salt if needed, and the sugar.

  3. Skim off any scum and serve hot with fried 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. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  2. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  3. Peas + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,044 recipes

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

  4. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the soup and give it its bulk and green colour.
Carbonate of soda
Softens the peas so they cook to tender quickly and break down smoothly.
Beef or veal stock
Supplies the liquid and savoury depth that the peas are cooked and puréed in.
Pounded sugar
Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks them down into a smooth soup. Skins and fibres that are left behind would make the texture grainy, so the peas should be pressed well and the sieve kept fine.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, 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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