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White Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef, white peas, vegetables, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef, water, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the carrots, onions, thyme, and celery.

  4. Cook until the meat is tender.

Make the soup

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve, pressing the peas to extract their pulp.

  2. In a separate pan, combine the chopped lettuces, shredded mint, sliced leek, and butter.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring often.

  4. Add a little of the strained soup to the vegetables.

  5. Cook for another 15 minutes.

  6. Combine the vegetable mixture with the remaining soup and enough cream to achieve a white color.

  7. Stir until it boils.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Pressed through the sieve, their pulp thickens the soup and gives it body.
Butter
Enriches the vegetables with fat, adding richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Thick cream
Adds richness and creaminess, and is used to whiten the soup.
Cabbage lettuces
Provide the leafy vegetable base that becomes tender when cooked in butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the vegetables while they cook. Cooking the lettuces, mint, leek and butter for 15 minutes with frequent stirring helps them soften evenly without scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, thyme, celery, cabbage, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, thyme, celery, cabbage, lettuce. 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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