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Green Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with peas, spinach, ham or bacon, French rolls, and stock.

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

Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the lettuces.

  2. Slice the onions.

Make the soup base

  1. Combine the lettuces, onions, ham, butter, 2 pints of peas, and 1 pint of stock in a pot.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Soak the crumb of the French roll in the remaining stock.

  4. Add the soaked crumb to the pot.

  5. Simmer for another hour.

  6. Boil the spinach.

  7. Strain the boiled spinach.

  8. Squeeze the spinach dry.

  9. Rub the soup and spinach through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the remaining pint of peas with a little sugar and salt.

  2. Drain the boiled peas.

  3. Add the drained peas to the thickened soup.

  4. Boil again.

  5. Season to taste.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Soaked crumb thickens the soup and gives it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the soup.
Peas
Provide the main green flavour and body of the soup.
Lettuces
Add sweetness and a soft, mellow vegetable base as they cook down.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften during simmering.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that cooks and carries the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Rub the soup and spinach through a sieve. Pressing the cooked solids through a sieve breaks them down into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves fibrous bits that make the soup feel gritty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, peas, lettuce, ham, spinach, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, peas, lettuce, ham, spinach, 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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