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Green Peas Soup

A hearty soup of green peas, vegetables, and herbs simmered in water, served with toasted bread.

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

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

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil.

  2. Add 6 chopped onions, 4 chopped turnips, 2 chopped 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.

Add the peas

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

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

  3. Rub the mixture through a cloth and return it to a clean pot.

  4. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

Season and serve

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

  2. Serve the soup in a tureen with small slices of very hard 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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
Provide the main body and flavour of the soup when beaten and pressed through a cloth.
Onions
Build the aromatic base of the broth as they stew.
Cabbage lettuces
Add vegetable flavour and body to the broth during stewing.
Turnips
Add earthy sweetness and body to the broth.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Rubbing the peas through a cloth. Pushing the cooked peas through a cloth breaks down their cell walls and starch so the soup becomes smooth and thick. Skipping this or leaving lumps gives a coarse, thin texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  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. 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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