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Piquant Pea Soup

A pea soup made with green peas, onions, butter, tomatoes, and fried bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Piquant Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. If using dried peas, scald them in a solution of baking soda water, then blanch and cook in 2 quarts of water until tender.

  2. Pass the cooked peas through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the chopped onions in 2 tablespoons of butter until soft.

  2. Add the cloves and bay leaf to the onions and stir together.

  3. Mix in the salt and tomatoes, then let the mixture cook slowly for 1 hour.

  4. If the soup is too thick, add a little boiling water and cook a bit longer.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in a pinch of red pepper and 1 tablespoon of butter just before serving.

  2. Top with fried bread squares.

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.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Peas + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the body of the soup, thickening it once cooked and passed through a sieve.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base as they soften in butter.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, balancing the sweetness of the peas and onions.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the onions and finished soup.
Bread
Adds crisp, golden texture contrasting with the smooth soup.

The step that matters

Passing the cooked peas through a sieve. Pushing the peas through a sieve breaks them down into a smooth purée. Leaving lumps or skins makes the soup grainy, so the peas should be cooked fully tender first.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, onion, butter, tomato, pepper, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, butter, tomato, pepper, 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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