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White Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef, peas, vegetables, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine beef, water, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add carrots, onions, thyme, and celery.

  4. Cook until the meat is tender.

  5. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  6. Press the peas to extract their pulp.

Cook the greens

  1. Combine lettuces, mint, leek, and butter in a stewpan.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Add a little of the strained soup to the stewpan.

  4. Cook for another 15 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Pour in the remaining soup and enough cream to achieve a white color.

  2. Stir until boiling.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body as it simmers until tender.
Peas
Their pulp thickens the soup and gives it body and a mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the greens a silky texture.
Cream
Adds richness and creaminess and lightens the colour to the white the soup is meant to be.
Cabbage lettuces
Cooked slowly in butter, they soften and add body and a gentle vegetable sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour in the remaining soup and enough cream to achieve a white color.. Adding cream to a boiling soup can cause it to curdle or separate. Adding enough cream for a white colour needs care, and stirring until just boiling keeps the emulsion smooth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, thyme, celery, cabbage, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, thyme, celery, cabbage, lettuce. 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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