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Green Pease-Soup

A soup made with fresh marrowy peas, butter, water, bread, and greens, simmered until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pease-Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan, then add boiling water.

  2. Add the slice of bread, old peas, green onions, spinach, lettuce, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stew until the peas can be pulped back into the liquid or pounded in a mortar.

Finish and adjust

  1. Add the young peas, chopped lettuce, and optional cucumber.

  2. If the soup is too thin, add arrowroot or rice flour.

  3. If the soup is too rich, add more butter.

  4. If the soup is not green enough, add chopped spinach or green spinach liquor.

  5. Stew for 30 minutes without boiling to maintain the green color.

  6. Add shredded mint 5 minutes before serving.

  7. Serve with diced fried bread.

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. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Bread
Helps thicken the soup and give it a softer, fuller body.
Spinach
Contributes green colour and an earthy, leafy flavour.
Green onions
Add mild aromatic onion flavour to the broth.
Arrowroot or rice flour
Thickens the soup if it is too thin, giving a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Stew for 30 minutes without boiling. Boiling a green vegetable soup, especially with long cooking, turns chlorophyll olive-brown and dulls the colour. Keeping it at a gentle simmer below a boil helps preserve the bright green.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, bread, spinach, lettuce, corn, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, bread, spinach, lettuce, corn, 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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