Skip to main content
Main

Green Peas Soup

A soup made from green peas, carrots, onions, lettuces, parsley, broth, and bread crumbs, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the pea shells and boil them in the broth for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the shells and bring the broth back to a boil.

Make the soup

  1. For thick soup, boil the old peas until they can be pulped through a colander.

  2. Stir the pulp into the broth and simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Add the bread crumbs and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Add the shelled peas, salt, carrots, onions, lettuces, and parsley.

  5. Boil rapidly for 30 minutes and serve.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the separately boiled young peas and serve.

  2. Season with salt and sugar, and add butter to the tureen before serving.

  3. For fried cucumber, slice thin, remove seeds, drain, flour, and fry in butter before adding to the soup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Give the soup its body and main flavour when pulped, with young peas added for texture.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the broth as they cook, giving the soup a fuller body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel when added to the tureen.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavours.

The step that matters

Pulping the old peas for thick soup. Pushing the cooked peas through a colander breaks down their starch and cell walls, so they thicken the broth evenly instead of leaving lumps.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, lettuce, parsley, veal, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, lettuce, parsley, veal, bread, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes