Skip to main content
Main

Pease Soup

A hearty soup made with peas, root vegetables, celery, and meat from feet and hock.

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

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Wash the ingredients well.

  2. Place the ingredients in a boiler with cold water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface.

  5. Add the carrots, turnips, onions, parsnip, and celery.

Cook and finish

  1. When the meat from the feet comes away from the bones, remove it.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  3. Chop the tender vegetables finely.

  4. Return the chopped vegetables to the soup or puree them through a colander.

  5. Add the pea puree to thicken the soup to your desired consistency.

  6. Stir in the meat from the feet and hock.

  7. Season with pepper, cayenne, and salt to taste.

  8. Serve hot.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pea puree
Thickens the soup and gives it body and a smooth, mellow texture.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they soften during simmering.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma as they cook down into the broth.
Celery
Contributes aroma and savoury flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the pea puree. Pea puree thickens the soup as it is stirred in. Added too early or at a boil, it can scorch on the bottom of the pot, so stir it in gently and adjust thickness gradually.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, parsnip, celery, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, parsnip, celery, 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.

More pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes