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Green-pea Soup

A soup of puréed green peas blended with veal beef broth, seasoned with pepper, salt, mace and sugar, finished with fried leeks, lettuce, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green-pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the green peas in salted water over low heat until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Drain the peas and pound them into a puree.

  3. Gradually mix the puree into the veal or beef broth.

  4. Season the broth with pepper and salt; add mace and sugar if using veal broth.

Prepare the garnishes

  1. Fry the boiled leeks and lettuce in butter until lightly browned.

  2. Fry the diced bread until golden and crispy.

  3. If in season, add boiled asparagus heads; otherwise, use hop-tops.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add the fried leeks, lettuce, and bread to the soup.

  2. Serve with chopped mint on the side.

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. Sorrel + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + sorreltop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 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

Large green peas
Form the main body of the soup when cooked and pureed, giving it thickness and flavour.
Veal or beef broth
Supplies the liquid base and savoury meaty flavour for the soup.
Butter
Browns the leeks and lettuce, adding nutty flavour and golden colour.
Slices of bread
Fried into dice, they add crisp texture contrasting with the smooth soup.

The step that matters

Pureeing the cooked peas. Peas must be fully cooked so they break down smoothly; undercooked peas stay grainy and give the soup an uneven texture.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, parsley, sorrel, chive, veal, pepper, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, parsley, sorrel, chive, veal, pepper, sugar. 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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