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Green-peas' Soup Without Meat

A vegetable soup made from young and old green peas, butter, onion, mint, and optional flour or greens, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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-peas' Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell the peas, separating the old from the young.

  2. Boil the old peas until soft.

  3. Strain the boiled old peas through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the strained liquid and old peas with the young peas in a large saucepan.

  2. Add pepper, salt, mint, onion, butter, and a little water.

  3. Sprinkle in some flour.

  4. Add fried spinach and cabbage-lettuce.

  5. Stir in a fried French roll.

  6. Let the soup stew until the young peas are tender.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young green peas
Provide the bright, sweet flavour and tender body of the finished soup.
Old green peas
Boiled and strained to thicken the broth and add earthy pea flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
French roll
Fried and stirred in, it thickens the soup and adds body.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic depth as the soup stews.

The step that matters

Let the soup stew until the young peas are tender. Young peas need sustained gentle simmering to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them starchy and firm, while overcooking dulls their bright green colour and fresh flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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