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Green-pea Soup

A soup made from stewed green peas, parsley, sorrel, chives, and leeks, seasoned with broth, pepper, salt, and optional asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green-pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the peas, parsley, sorrel, and chives in salt water over low heat until thoroughly stewed.

  2. Drain the peas and pound them into a puree.

  3. Gradually mix the puree into the veal or beef broth.

  4. Season the broth with pepper and salt (or mace and a little sugar for veal).

Prepare the garnish

  1. Boil leeks and lettuce until tender.

  2. Fry the leeks and lettuce in butter with diced fried bread.

Serve

  1. Add the fried leeks, lettuce, and bread to the soup just before serving.

  2. If in season, add boiled asparagus; otherwise, use hop-tops as a substitute.

  3. Serve with chopped mint on the side.

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. Sorrel + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + sorreltop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 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

Green peas
Form the body of the soup as they stew and are pounded into a thick puree.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and browns the leeks, lettuce, and bread for richness.
Leeks
Soften and add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the garnish.
Slices of bread
Fried into crisp pieces that add texture to the soup at serving.
Veal or beef broth
Serves as the liquid base that gives the soup its savory depth.

The step that matters

Stewing the peas until thoroughly soft. Peas must be fully cooked so they purée smoothly and their starch thickens the broth evenly; undercooked peas leave a grainy, thin soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, parsley, sorrel, chive, veal, pepper, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, parsley, sorrel, chive, veal, pepper, 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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