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Green Pea Soup

A soup made with peas, spinach, mint, stock, and butter, finished with flour and served with croutons.

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 mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt 1 oz. of butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the peas, spinach, and mint, cover, and steam for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Add the stock, water, and washed pea shells if young and soft.

  4. Boil quickly until tender, then strain and rub the vegetables through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt the remaining butter in the stewpan, sprinkle in the flour, and add the soup.

  2. Stir until boiling, season to taste, and serve with croutons of fried bread.

  3. Optionally, add a few cooked green peas and a little cream 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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled peas
Form the main body and flavour of the soup once cooked and puréed.
White stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the vegetable flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted into the vegetables and thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it comes to the boil, giving it body.
Spinach
Adds colour and a mild, earthy depth to the green soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the vegetables through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables through a fine sieve breaks them into a smooth purée. Leaving them coarse or skipping the straining leaves a grainy, fibrous texture instead of a silky soup.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, spinach, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, spinach, butter, flour, pepper. 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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