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Green Pea$ Soup

A hearty soup made with water, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, cloves, mace, cabbage, green peas, pepper, salt, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Green Pea$ Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Green Pea$ Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil.

  2. Add 6 sliced onions, 4 sliced turnips, 2 sliced carrots, 2 sliced heads of celery, some cloves, 4 blades of mace, and 4 chopped cabbage lettuces.

  3. Stew for 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

Make the soup

  1. Add 2 quarts of old green peas to the broth and boil until tender.

  2. Mash or bruise the peas and mix them with the broth.

  3. Rub the mixture through a cloth into a clean pot and boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with small diced toasted bread.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Old green peas
Main body of the soup, thickened into a purée when mashed and rubbed through a cloth.
Onions
Build the aromatic flavour base of the broth during the long stew.
Turnips
Add body and savoury sweetness to the broth as they stew.
Cabbage lettuces
Contribute vegetable flavour and body to the stewed broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a cloth. Pushing the mashed peas through a cloth removes skins and fibres, giving a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, celery, clove, cabbage, 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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