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Green Peas Soup

A soup made with green peas, carrots, onions, lettuce, parsley, broth, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell and wash the peas.

  2. Boil the pea shells in the broth from veal, lamb, mutton, or fowl for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the shells and return the broth to a boil.

Make the soup

  1. Add the peas, salt, carrots, onions, lettuce, and parsley to the broth.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, then serve.

  3. For thick soup, boil a peck of peas, reserving 1 pint of the youngest peas.

  4. Pulp the older peas through a colander and stir into the broth.

  5. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

  6. Add bread crumbs and boil for a few minutes.

  7. Stir in the reserved young peas and serve.

  8. Season with salt and sugar, adding butter to the tureen before serving.

Fried cucumber garnish

  1. For fried cucumber, slice thin, remove seeds, drain, flour, and fry in butter before serving.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main body, sweetness and flavor of the soup when pulped into the broth.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the broth as they soak up liquid and soften during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the vegetables and peas.

The step that matters

Pulping the older peas through a colander. Pushing the cooked peas through a sieve breaks down their starch and fibre, which is what gives the soup its body; unpulped peas leave it thin and grainy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, lettuce, parsley, veal, bread, butter):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, lettuce, parsley, veal, bread, butter. 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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