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To Make Green Pease Soup

A soup made from peas, veal, ham, carrot, beet leaves, and spinach juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 870 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

To Make Green Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Shell the peas and boil them in spring water until soft.

  2. Work the peas through a fine sieve.

  3. Add some additional water to the strained liquid.

Make the soup

  1. Add the knuckle of veal, slice of ham, carrot, and beet leaves.

  2. Boil for two hours and then strain the mixture.

  3. Mix the pulp back into the strained liquid.

  4. Add a little spinach juice to achieve a nice color.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together870 recipes

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

  2. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,994 recipes

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

  3. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together550 recipes

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

  4. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together3,264 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
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it when worked through a sieve.
Knuckle of veal
Adds body and savory depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Ham
Contributes salty, savory flavor to the broth during simmering.

Flavor stand-ins for the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, veal, ham, carrot):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, veal, ham, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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