Skip to main content
Main

Green Peas Soup

A soup of lean beef and green peas, sweetened with sugar and mint, served over toasted bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef and water in a large pot.

  2. Boil slowly and skim well.

Prepare the pea pulp

  1. Boil the green peas with mint, salt, and sugar until soft.

  2. Strain the peas from the water.

  3. Mash them in a colander until the pulp drips through.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir the pea pulp into the strained beef soup.

  2. Place the toasted bread squares in a tureen.

  3. Pour the soup over them.

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 + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  4. Beef + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,044 recipes

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

  5. Mint + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together244 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

Lean beef
Gives the broth its savory, meaty flavor and body.
Green peas
Provide the main body, color and sweet vegetal flavor of the soup once mashed into pulp.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic note that brightens the pea flavor.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth. Boiling the beef gently and skimming off the foam and fat that rise keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Boiling hard would emulsify fat and cloud the liquid.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Mintthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Pepperfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, peas, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes