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Soup

Green Pea

A simple broth-based soup with green peas, butter, sugar, and optional mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint 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 Pea

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Bring the broth to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add the shelled peas and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the sugar and a little mint.

  4. Continue boiling for another 15 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir in the butter and season with pepper and salt.

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 + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled peas
Provide the main body, sweet flavour and green colour of the soup.
Veal or beef broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the savoury flavour through the soup.
Butter
Adds fat that rounds out the flavour and gives a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savoury broth and the vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Timing the long boil. Peas hold their bright green colour only briefly in hot liquid. Prolonged boiling breaks down chlorophyll, so the soup can turn dull olive. Keep the boil controlled and watch the total time.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sugar, butter, peas, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sugar, butter, peas, pepper. 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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