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Soup

Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, mint, white stock, pepper, sea salt, and optional spinach juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the green peas and mint until tender.

  2. Strain the peas and place them in a saucepan.

  3. Add the white stock and let it simmer until the peas are mashed.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. If the soup is not green enough, add spinach juice for color.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then serve.

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

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

  2. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  5. Mint + spinachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the soup and give it its thick, mashed texture.
White stock
Provides the liquid that carries the peas and lets them break down into a smooth soup.
Spinach juice
Adds green color to the soup when it is not green enough.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes skins and fibers, which gives the soup a smooth, even texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, mint, pepper):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Lettucefits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, mint, pepper. 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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