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Green Pea Puree Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, onion, carrot, stock, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Pea Puree Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. In a large pot, boil 3 pints of green peas in salted water with 1 carrot and 1 onion until soft.

  2. Remove the carrot and onion, then drain the peas through a colander.

  3. Pass the peas through a fine sieve back into the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Add 2 quarts of stock and 1 teaspoon of sugar, stirring until it just comes to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and let it simmer.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  3. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the body of the soup, giving it its main flavour and thickness once passed through a sieve.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that thins the purée and adds savoury depth.
Sugar
Rounds out the flavour, softening the vegetal bitterness of the peas.

The step that matters

Passing the peas through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and fibrous rather than silky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, carrot, sugar. 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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