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An Excellent Green Peas Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, stock, sugar, and optional asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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An Excellent Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Peas and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 808 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

An Excellent Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the peas with ½ teaspoon of carbonate of soda until tender, about 25 to 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas and add them to 2 quarts of boiling beef or veal stock.

  3. Gently stew the mixture for 30 minutes.

  4. Pass the soup through a fine sieve into a clean pan and bring it to a boil.

  5. Add salt if needed and 1 small teaspoon of pounded sugar.

  6. Skim off any scum and serve hot.

Variation

  1. For a variation, add ½ pint more stock and ¾ pint of well‑drained asparagus points just 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.

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 + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  2. Beef + asparagustop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

  3. Peas + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,044 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + asparagustop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 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 once cooked tender and passed through a sieve.
Carbonate of soda
Softens the peas so they break down more easily during boiling.
Beef or veal stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour for the whole soup.
Pounded sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Passing the soup through a fine sieve. Cooked peas must be pressed through a fine sieve to remove skins and fibres, giving the soup a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beef, sugar):

  1. Asparagusthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beef, 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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