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Green Peas Soup

A hearty soup made with water, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, cloves, mace, cabbage, green peas, pepper, sea salt, and served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup

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 ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water.

  2. Add 6 onions, 4 turnips, 2 carrots, 2 heads of sliced celery, some cloves, 4 blades of mace, and 4 chopped cabbage lettuces.

  3. Stew for 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

  4. Add 2 quarts of old green peas to the broth and boil until tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Beat or bruise the peas and mix them with the broth.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to a clean pot.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Serve in a tureen with small slices of 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 flavour, thickening the soup once beaten and sieved.
Onions
Build a savoury aromatic base that flavours the broth during stewing.
Turnips
Add earthy sweetness and body to the broth as it stews.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and colour to the stewed broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savoury aroma to the broth during stewing.
Cabbage lettuces
Add vegetable bulk and mild flavour to the stewed broth.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes skins, producing a smooth, thick texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and thin.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, celery, clove, 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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