Skip to main content
Main

Green Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef, green peas, and rice flour, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the empty pea pods in the water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain out the pods and add the finely cut beef.

  3. Cook gently for 1.5 hours or until the beef is tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the peas and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a colander to pulp the peas.

  3. Return to the heat, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the rice flour mixed with cold water and the parsley.

  4. Stir for 10 minutes and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

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

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides savory meat flavor and body to the broth as it simmers until tender.
Green peas
Form the main body of the soup and, once pulped, give it a thick, smooth texture.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smoother, more body-filled consistency.

The step that matters

Stir in the rice flour mixture. Rice flour mixed with cold water must be stirred in evenly before the soup returns to heat. Dispersing it in cold liquid first prevents lumps, and stirring while it heats lets starch swell and thicken the soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, rice, flour, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, rice, flour, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes