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Peas Soup

A clear mutton broth soup with bacon, onion, carrot, turnips, cucumbers, lettuce, and green peas, finished with butter and French roll crumb.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Make clear mutton broth.

  2. Add bacon, onion, carrot, turnips, salt, and herbs to the broth.

  3. Strain the broth and brown it with butter and the French roll crumb.

Cook and serve

  1. Add cucumbers and lettuce; stew for 15 minutes in 1 quart of broth.

  2. When boiling, add green peas and the remaining broth.

  3. Serve hot, optionally adding mushroom catsup.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton broth
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavour of the soup.
Green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavour of the soup.
Cucumbers
Soften during stewing and add moisture and a mild fresh flavour.
Lettuce
Wilts into the broth, adding soft texture and mild sweetness.
French roll crumb
Browns with butter and thickens the broth slightly, adding body and toasted flavour.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, carrot, turnip, butter, cucumber, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, carrot, turnip, butter, cucumber, lettuce. 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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