Name: Green Pea Soup with Fried Bread and Stewed Prunes
Ingredients: ½ cup dried green peas; 1 onion, chopped; 2 small slices of bread; 4 tablespoons fat for cooking and frying; 2 tablespoons flour for cooking and frying; 6 prunes

Why it works: Peas and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup with Fried Bread and Stewed Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

Soak the peas overnight in water.
Drain and cook the peas with chopped onion in fresh water until tender.
In a separate pan, heat fat and fry the bread until golden.
In the same pan, add flour and stir to make a roux.
Add the cooked peas and onion to the roux, stirring until combined.

Serve

Serve the soup with fried bread and stewed prunes 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).
Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,460 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,676 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together32,460 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,837 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried green peas: Form the body of the soup as they soften and break down during cooking.
Flour: Forms a roux with the fat, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Fat: Carries the frying of the bread and forms the base of the roux.
Bread: Fried until golden to add crisp texture and toasted flavour as a garnish.

The step that matters

Making the roux. Flour must be stirred in and cooked briefly with the fat before the peas are added. Cooking it removes the raw starchy taste and lets the flour thicken the soup evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, bread, flour):

Shallotfits better
Asparagusfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, bread, 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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

Green Peas229 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

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Green Pea Soup with Fried Bread and Stewed Prunes