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Soup a LA Provencale

A green pea soup with rice, butter, broth, stock, and sugar, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,405 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the green peas over high heat.

  3. Pound the peas very fine with some broth in a mortar.

  4. Strain the peas through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the strained peas to a pan with the stock and bring to a boil.

  2. Let it boil until the fat and scum rise to the top, then skim the fat and scum off.

  3. Add the boiled rice and sugar to the soup.

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. Peas + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  3. Peas + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,878 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together98,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Rice + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,324 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
Form the main body and flavour of the soup once pounded and strained.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour as the peas are fried.
Rice
Adds body and thickness to the finished soup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury peas and stock.

The step that matters

Straining the pounded peas. Pressing the pounded peas through a fine sieve removes fibrous skins and lumps, giving a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, sugar):

  1. Almondbetter flavor fit
  2. Peanutbetter flavor fit
  3. Beansbetter flavor fit
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, sugar. 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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