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Soup

Potage Aux Petits Pois

A French soup of veal, onions, herbs, bacon, and green peas, thickened and served creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potage Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Layer onions, small slices of veal, and various herbs in a pot.

  2. Add stock and let it stew gently until it develops a good color.

Prepare the peas

  1. Fry a little bacon with parsley in a separate pan.

  2. Add green peas to the bacon and stew until tender.

  3. Pound the peas in a mortar and add them to the soup with the veal.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the veal from the soup.

  2. Pass the soup through a fine sieve.

  3. Add a pinch of powdered sugar.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Serve the soup thick like cream.

  6. Serve the soup with another sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main body and flavor, thickening the soup when pounded and sieved.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries flavor and extracts color from the other ingredients.
Onions
Build a savory, aromatic base that deepens in flavor as they stew.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor when fried with the parsley.

The step that matters

Pass the soup through a fine sieve. Pounded peas leave fibrous bits that make the soup grainy unless they are pressed through a fine sieve, which gives the smooth, creamy texture the soup should have.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, veal, parsley, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, parsley, sugar, 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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