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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from boiled peas, parsley, green onions, mint, and water, blended and simmered with butter, salt, sugar, and glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 soup

  1. Boil peas, parsley, green onions, and mint in water with butter and salt until peas are done.

  2. Drain the liquid into a pan and reserve it.

  3. Pound the peas in a mortar and mix with the reserved liquid.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a soup pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the soup over low heat, stirring without boiling.

  2. Add butter, pepper, salt, sugar, and glaze.

  3. Serve hot with fried crusts or toasted bread on the side.

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

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

  2. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Large peas
Provide the main body, sweet flavour and green colour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Green onions
Contribute a mild allium aroma to the broth.
Glaze
Adds concentrated savoury flavour and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Heat the soup over low heat, stirring without boiling.. Boiling a puréed soup after adding butter and dairy-style richness can cause separation and a dull, grainy texture. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion smooth and the colour bright.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, parsley, mint, butter, sugar, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, parsley, mint, butter, sugar, bread. 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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