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Green Pease Soup

A soup made from boiled peas, broth, bread crumbs, and optional cucumber garnish, flavored with salt, sugar, and mint.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell the peas, separating old ones into one bowl and young ones into another. Reserve 1 pint of young peas.

  2. Boil a large saucepan half full of water.

  3. When boiling, add the peas and a handful of salt.

  4. Cook for 20-30 minutes until tender.

  5. Drain the peas in a colander.

  6. Transfer them to a clean gallon stew pan.

Make the soup

  1. Add 3 quarts of broth and cover.

  2. Simmer gently over low heat for 1 hour.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into another pan.

  5. If the soup is too thick, add more broth.

  6. Add the reserved young peas.

  7. Season with salt and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Slice the cucumbers, remove seeds, drain on a cloth, flour them, and fry in butter until light brown.

  2. Add the fried cucumbers to the soup just before serving.

  3. If the soup isn't green enough, pound pea hulls or spinach and squeeze the juice into the soup.

  4. Add mint leaves if desired.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the body and green flavour of the soup once cooked and sieved.
Veal or mutton broth
Supplies the liquid base and savoury flavour of the soup.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup and give it a fuller, smoother body.
Cucumbers
Add a golden, lightly browned fried element with a contrasting texture.
Butter
Fat for frying the cucumbers, adding browning and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy soup with pea skins in it.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, veal, bread, sugar, cucumber, butter, mint):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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