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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, turnips, carrot, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shell the largest green peas and cook them until soft.

  2. Rinse the peas through a fine colander and return the pulp to the pan.

  3. Add sliced turnips, carrot, and boiling water to the pan.

  4. When the vegetables are nearly soft, add the smaller green peas.

  5. Optionally, substitute potatoes for turnips.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  3. Peas + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 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

Largest green peas
Form the main body of the soup once cooked and strained into a pulp.
Turnips
Add body and a mild, slightly peppery flavour as they soften.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour to the soup.
Smaller green peas
Add fresh pea flavour and a bit of texture when added near the end.

The step that matters

Adding the smaller green peas. Added too early, they overcook and turn dull and mushy. Adding them once the vegetables are nearly soft keeps their colour and texture bright.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot. 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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