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Green-Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, butter, mint, spinach, stock, sugar, flour, and extra peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green-Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea base

  1. Combine 1¼ pints of green peas, 1 oz of butter, a sprig of mint, and spinach leaves in a stewpan.

  2. Cover and steam for 15 minutes without browning.

  3. Add 1 quart of white stock and 1 teaspoon of castor sugar. Bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer until the peas are tender.

  5. Strain through a fine sieve.

Thicken and serve

  1. Melt the remaining 1 oz of butter in a saucepan and mix in ½ oz of flour.

  2. Stir in the pea puree gradually. Bring to a boil.

  3. Add the remaining ¼ pint of boiled peas before serving.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mint + spinachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavour and the body of the soup once puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the steaming and roux.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the peas are simmered in.
Flour
Thickens the soup as a roux with the butter.
Castor sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the savoury stock and peas.

The step that matters

Stirring in the pea puree gradually. Adding the purée slowly into the butter and flour roux lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, spinach, sugar, 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.

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