Name: Green Pea Soup
Ingredients: 2 lbs peas; 1½ quarts second stock; 1 handful spinach; 1 sprig parsley; 1 sprig mint; 1 teaspoon sugar; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Bring the stock to a boil.
Shell the peas and wash the pods carefully.

Cook

Add the peas, washed spinach, parsley, mint, and sugar to the stock.
Add a small basin of the best pea-pods.
Boil for 1½ hours.

Strain and serve

Strain the mixture, rubbing it through a sieve.
Season with pepper and salt, then serve.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,137 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas: Provide the main body and flavour of the soup once cooked and strained.
Second stock: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Spinach: Adds green colour and a mild, earthy depth to the soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, parsley, mint, sugar, pepper):

Chickpeafits better
Lentilsfits better
Cashew nutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, parsley, mint, sugar, pepper. 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.