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The Berkshire Receipt for Winter Peas-Soup

A winter soup made from boiled peas, butter, celery, onion, anchovies, herbs, beet, spinach, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The Berkshire Receipt for Winter Peas-Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the peas down to a pulp and strain them.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the celery, onion, anchovies, pepper, salt, mint, parsley, spinach, and beet.

  3. Stew the mixture in the butter until tender.

  4. Add the pea pulp until the soup reaches the desired thickness.

  5. Stir in the white sugar and boil everything together.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Break down into a pulp that forms the body and thickness of the soup.
Butter
Melts to carry flavor and give the soup a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Onion
Softens during stewing to add savory sweetness and aromatic depth.
Celery
Softens during stewing to add a mild, vegetal aroma and savory base.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the butter to add savory depth without a distinctly fishy taste.
White sugar
Added at the end to balance savory notes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the pea pulp until the soup reaches the desired thickness.. Pea pulp thickens as it is added and only partly sets, so adding too much makes the soup pasty. Add it gradually and judge the consistency as you go, since the soup thickens further once boiled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, celery, pepper, mint, parsley, spinach):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, celery, pepper, mint, parsley, spinach. 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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