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Soup a LA Sap

A hearty beef soup with potatoes, peas, rice, celery, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,019 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the beef thinly.

  2. Grate the potatoes and add them to the water in a large pot.

  3. Add the onion, grey peas, and rice.

  4. Boil until reduced to 5 pints.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut the celery and add it to the pot.

  2. Pulp the boiled peas through a fine cloth into the soup.

  3. Stew until everything is tender.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Serve with fried bread on the side.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Potato + oniontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,019 recipes

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

  2. Celery + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Beef + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

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

  4. Beef + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,051 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together827 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down into the soup, adding body and thickening the broth.
Grey peas
Pulped through a cloth, they thicken the soup and add earthy flavour.
Rice
Softens as it simmers, adding body and absorbing some of the broth.
Beef
Contributes savoury meaty flavour to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Pulp the boiled peas through a fine cloth into the soup. Peas must be fully cooked before pulping, or the purée stays grainy and thins the texture. Pressing them through a fine cloth removes skins and fibres, giving the soup a smooth body.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, onion, rice, celery, pepper, bread):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Peanutabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Sesameabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, onion, rice, celery, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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