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Green Pease Soup

A soup made from green peas, bread, herbs, butter, and mixed vegetables, simmered together and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Dissolve the bread in water.

  2. Shell the peas, keeping old and young separate.

  3. Boil the old peas in the bread water until tender, then pulp them through a colander while warm. Retain the water and set the pulp aside for future use.

  4. In the retained water, boil the young peas with sweet herbs, cloves, mace, white pepper, and salt.

Make the soup

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the chopped lettuces, spinach, parsley, onions, and cucumbers. Stew the vegetables in the butter until tender, then transfer them to the boiling pea water.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, then add the reserved pulped peas and bread, boiling for a short time longer.

  3. Adjust thickness with more water as needed, then stir in a few ounces of butter 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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Clove + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 of the soup, with old peas pulped to thicken it.
Bread
Dissolved in water and added to the pulp, it helps thicken the soup.
Butter
Stewing the greens in it adds richness and carries flavour, and a final addition gives a silky finish.
Lettuces
Softened in butter, they add tender body and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Spinach
Stewed until tender, it adds colour and a soft, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Pulping the old peas while warm. Pulping while the peas are still warm helps them break down smoothly into the water. Once cooled, the starches firm up and the pulp is harder to press through, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, bread, clove, mace, butter, lettuce, spinach):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, bread, clove, mace, butter, lettuce, spinach. 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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