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Green Pea Soup

A simple soup made with green peas, vegetable broth, onion, butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent.

  3. Stir in the green peas and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Pour in the vegetable broth and bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

  6. Blend the soup until smooth and season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with fresh mint leaves.

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

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

  2. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, sweetness and bright green colour of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the onion.
Onion
Builds a savoury aromatic base as it softens in the butter.
Vegetable broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the peas and sets the soup's volume and body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the broth comes to a boil. Once the peas are cooked, a long hard boil can dull the green colour and flavour. Keeping the heat reduced to a simmer protects both while the peas soften fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, pepper, mint):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, pepper, 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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