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Green Pea Soup with Stock

A lamb stock soup with peas, potatoes, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,016 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wash the neck of lamb in cold water.

  2. Place the washed lamb in a soup pot with 6 quarts of cold water.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt.

  4. Bring the soup to a gentle boil for 2 hours.

  5. Skim the surface of the soup.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add 1 quart of shelled peas.

  2. Add a little pepper.

  3. Cover the soup and boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Scrape the skins from 1 pint of small young potatoes and slice the potatoes.

  5. Add the sliced potatoes to the soup.

  6. Cover the soup and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the butter and flour mixture to the soup 10 minutes before removing from heat.

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.

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 + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Provide the main body, sweetness and green colour of the soup.
Butter and flour
Flour and melted butter thicken the broth slightly and add richness.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add starch that gives the soup body.
Neck of lamb
Releases collagen and flavour into the water, forming the savoury base broth.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it should be mixed with butter first to form a paste. Adding it near the end, with the soup still simmering, lets it thicken without taking on a raw floury taste.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, potato, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, potato, egg, butter, flour. 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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