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Another Green Peas Soup

A soup made from green peas, spinach, and bacon or mutton, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and spinach work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 550 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Another Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, combine the pea shells and cold water with the bacon or mutton.

  2. Boil until the shells are very soft.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve, pressing the shells to extract all the flavor.

Add the spinach and peas

  1. In a mortar, pound the spinach and mix it with a little of the strained liquid.

  2. Strain the spinach mixture through a sieve and add it to the remaining liquid.

  3. Boil gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the shelled peas and cook until tender; the soup is ready.

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

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

  2. Peas + muttontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + spinachtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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, sweet pea flavor and thickness of the soup.
Bacon or mutton
Adds fat and savory, meaty flavor to the liquid during the long simmer.
Spinach
Adds green color and a fresh, leafy flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 30 minutes. Prolonged high heat dulls the bright green color of spinach and can break down the pea texture. A gentle simmer keeps the soup green and smooth while the flavors blend.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, mutton. 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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