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Green Pea Soup

A vegetable soup made with peas, celery, carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, spinach, and stock, served with fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Green Pea 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 Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine celery, mint, carrots, turnips, green onions, parsley, peas, lettuces, spinach, and stock.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve or tammy.

Finish and serve

  1. If the soup is not a good green color, add a little spinach juice before serving.

  2. Season with sugar, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. Serve with fried bread cubes 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.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Provide the main body, sweetness and green colour of the soup.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that cooks the vegetables and carries their flavour.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soft texture once cooked and sieved.
Lettuces
Add soft leafy body and a fresh, mild vegetable flavour.
Spinach
Adds deep green colour and a leafy flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking until fully tender before sieving. Vegetables must be fully softened so the purée passes smoothly through a fine sieve. Undercooked starch and fibre stay grainy and leave a rough texture. Overcooking can dull the bright green colour of the peas and spinach.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, peas, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, peas, 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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