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An Excellent Green Peas Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, stock, sugar, and soda, served hot with optional fried bread or asparagus.

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

Why it works: Peas and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 808 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

An Excellent Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the peas with the carbonate of soda until tender, about 25 to 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas and add them to the boiling stock.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the soup to the pan, bring to a boil, and add salt and sugar if needed.

  2. Serve hot with fried bread or add asparagus points just before serving.

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 + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Beef + asparagustop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + asparagustop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main body and flavour of the soup once cooked and strained.
Carbonate of soda
Raises the pH of the peas, helping them soften and keep a bright green colour.
Beef or veal stock
Forms the liquid base and adds savoury depth to the soup.
Pounded sugar
Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Boiling the peas with carbonate of soda. Cooking the peas until fully tender is needed for a smooth strained soup. Alkaline soda helps keep the green colour bright, but too much can make the peas taste soapy and soft, so measure it carefully.

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beef, sugar, bread):

  1. Asparagusthe original
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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

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