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Pea Soup

A soup made from boiled peas, butter, anchovies, spices, herbs, beetroot, spinach, and a touch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Beetroot and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 280 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the peas until they are a pulp and strain them.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter.

Make the soup

  1. Add the anchovies, ground pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, mint, beetroot, and spinach.

  2. Stew the mixture until tender.

  3. Add the pulped peas to achieve the desired soup consistency.

  4. Stir in the loaf sugar.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil.

  6. 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. Beetroot + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the pulp that gives the soup its body and thick texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Anchovies
Add a deep savoury, salty note that rounds out the green flavours.
Loaf sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to balance the savoury and herbal notes.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture until tender. Cooking the herbs, beetroot and spinach gently until soft releases their flavour and colour evenly into the butter. Rushing this leaves them raw and fibrous, which dulls the soup's taste and texture.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, pepper, parsley, beetroot, spinach, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, pepper, parsley, beetroot, spinach, sugar. 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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