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Meagre Green Peas’ Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, veal broth, and seasonings, finished with boiled parsley pulp and served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meagre Green Peas’ Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the peas in veal broth until tender.

  2. Strain and pound the peas, preserving the liquid.

  3. Rub the peas through a fine cloth and add the pulp to the liquid.

  4. Stir in a little flour, water, pepper, salt, and sugar if desired.

  5. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add the pulp of boiled parsley for color.

  2. Cut bread into thin pieces, dry them by the fire, and serve on a plate.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body and sweet, earthy flavour of the soup, and thicken it when pounded.
Veal broth
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth in which the peas cook and soften.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly so it feels smoother and more substantial.
Bread
Adds a crisp, toasty contrast as dried sippets served with the soup.

The step that matters

Rub the peas through a fine cloth. Pounding and sieving breaks the cooked peas into a fine pulp that gives the soup its smooth body. Leaving lumps or skins makes the texture grainy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, pepper, sugar, parsley, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, pepper, sugar, parsley, bread. 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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