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Green Pea Soup

A hearty veal soup with bread, carrots, onions, turnip, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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

Make the broth

  1. Boil the shin of veal in 4 quarts of water with 2 onions, 2 carrots, pepper, and coarse sea salt in a large pot.

  2. Brown 2 slices of bread.

  3. Add the browned bread to the soup.

  4. Let the soup boil for 2 hours.

  5. Remove the meat.

  6. If the meat is not browned enough, add a little soy sauce.

Stew the meat and vegetables

  1. Dice 2 carrots, 1 turnip, and 2 onions.

  2. Put the meat and diced vegetables into a saucepan.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves.

  4. Add just enough water to cover the contents.

  5. Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours.

Finish the gravy

  1. Remove the meat.

  2. Mix flour with water. Stir in 2 tablespoons of mixed mustard.

  3. Add this mixture to the gravy. Bring to a boil.

  4. Pour over the meat and vegetables.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Veal shin
Breaks down during long simmering, releasing gelatin that gives the broth body and rich flavor.
Turnip
Softens during stewing and adds a mild, slightly sharp sweetness to the vegetables.
Bread
Browned bread adds toasty flavor and helps thicken and enrich the broth.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the water.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the gravy.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour and water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before it goes into the hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Bringing the mixture to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken the gravy evenly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, carrot, pepper, bread, turnip, clove):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, carrot, pepper, bread, turnip, clove. 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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