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Green Peas Soup

A soup made with veal, bacon, green peas, mint, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Mint and peas 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. Cut the veal and bacon into pieces and place them in a soup kettle with the mint and water.

  2. Boil moderately fast and skim well until the meat is tender.

  3. Strain out the meat and add the quart of young green peas to the broth.

  4. Boil the peas until they dissolve and thicken the soup, giving it a green color.

Add the peas and serve

  1. In another pot, boil the 2 quarts of green peas with a sprig of mint and the sugar for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the mint and add the whole peas to the soup, boiling together for another 10 minutes.

  3. Serve the soup in a tureen.

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. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Veal + peastop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together644 recipes

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

  3. Veal + minttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together129 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Gives the broth body and rich, savory flavor as it simmers.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that deepens the flavor of the broth.
Young green peas
Dissolve into the broth to thicken it and give it a green color.
Green peas
Boiled whole with mint and sugar, they add texture and sweetness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil the peas until they dissolve. Peas must cook long enough to break down fully, releasing starch that thickens the broth. Undercooked peas leave the soup thin and grainy, while overcooking dulls the green color.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, peas, 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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