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Green Peas Soup

A soup made with water, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, cloves, mace, cabbage, green peas, pepper, salt, and toasted 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 chopped onions, 4 chopped turnips, 2 chopped carrots, 2 heads of celery, some cloves, 4 blades of mace, and 4 chopped small cabbage lettuces.

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

Make the soup

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

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

  3. Rub the mixture through a cloth into a clean pot and boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup in a tureen with small, very hard toasted bread dices.

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

Old green peas
Give the soup its body and main flavour as they break down when boiled and rubbed through.
Cabbage lettuces
Add vegetable bulk and mild sweetness to the broth during the long stew.
Onions
Build the savoury base of the broth as they soften and release their sugars during stewing.
Toasted bread
Adds crunch and contrasting texture to the smooth soup when served.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a cloth. Pressing the cooked peas and vegetables through a cloth removes fibrous skins and lumps, giving a smooth, even texture. Under-pressing leaves grainy soup.

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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