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Green Pease Soup

A soup made from boiled peas, broth, and optional vegetables, seasoned with salt, sugar, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,137 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell the peas, keeping old ones separate from young ones. Reserve 1 pint of young peas.

  2. Boil the peas in a large saucepan with a handful of salt for 20-30 minutes until tender. Drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a clean gallon stew pan, combine the drained peas with 3 quarts of broth. Cover and simmer on low for 1 hour.

  2. Add 1 teacup of bread crumbs and rub the mixture through a tamis into another stew pan. Stir and adjust thickness with more broth if needed.

  3. Add the reserved young peas, and season with salt and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, slice cucumbers, remove seeds, drain, flour, and fry in butter until light brown. Add to the soup just before serving.

  2. For a greener soup, pound pea hulls or spinach, and squeeze the juice into the soup. Add mint leaves if desired.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together355 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together629 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the main body and flavor of the soup when cooked and puréed.
Veal or mutton broth
Supplies the liquid and savory base that the puréed peas are thinned with.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup by absorbing liquid and helping the purée hold body.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a tamis. Pressing the cooked peas and crumbs through a fine sieve removes skins and fibres, giving a smooth texture. Adjusting thickness with broth afterward keeps the soup from becoming pasty.

Flavor stand-ins for the cucumber

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

  1. Asparagusabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Shallotabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Leekabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, veal, bread, sugar, butter, spinach, mint. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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