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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, spinach, broth, onion, and cream, sweetened with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Boil the peas until tender, then drain and pass through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the pea puree with the broth and add the chopped onion.

  2. If desired, boil the onions with the peas and pass them through the sieve for added flavor.

  3. Bruise the spinach leaves and mix with the cream or milk.

  4. Stir the spinach mixture into the pea and broth mixture until thickened to a cream-like consistency.

  5. Add a pinch of powdered sugar and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with croutons or young peas added.

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

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

  2. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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, giving it its flavor and thick puree texture.
Spinach leaves
Add a green color and a fresh, vegetal flavor to the soup.
Broth
Provides the liquid base that thins the pea puree into soup.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Passing the peas through a fine sieve. Pushing cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes skins, producing a smooth puree. Skipping or coarsening this step leaves a grainy texture.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, onion, cream, sugar):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, onion, cream, sugar. 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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