Skip to main content
Main

Green Pea Soup, No. 2

A soup made from shelled peas, bacon or butter, parsley, water, veal broth or milk, spinach, and tender young peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,025 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Separate old peas from young peas, reserving young peas to use whole in the soup.

  2. Boil the large peas, then drain and dry them.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine large peas with bacon (or butter), parsley, and enough water to cover.

  2. Simmer until the peas are tender, then rub through a sieve or pound in a mortar.

  3. Dilute the pea paste with veal broth flavored with onion, or milk for a maigre soup.

  4. Add spinach leaves or juice for color, then pass through a tamis.

  5. Stir in the tender young peas and warm them before serving.

  6. If no young peas are available, serve with small croutons.

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

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

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

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

  3. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Large peas
Form the body of the soup as they soften and break down into a smooth paste.
Bacon or butter
Adds fat for richness and a savory flavor base to the soup.
Veal broth or milk
Thins the pea paste and adds savory depth or creaminess.
Spinach leaves or juice
Provides the green color of the finished soup.

The step that matters

Pass the soup through a sieve or tamis. Rubbing or straining the cooked peas breaks down the fibers and removes skins, giving a smooth, even texture instead of a grainy one.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, veal, spinach):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, veal, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes