Name: Green Peas Soup
Ingredients: 1 pound split green peas; 1 good quantity of spinach; 4 leeks; Fresh or dried mint to taste; 1 tablespoon brown sugar; Cayenne pepper to taste; Strong beef stock; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Spinach and leek share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soften the split green peas in a little water with the butter.
Boil the spinach and leeks separately until tender.
Gradually mix the boiled spinach and leeks with the beef stock.
In summer, add fresh peas and lettuce to the mixture.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Spinach + leektop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,137 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Peas + leektop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together249 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together550 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, spinach, leek, sugar, pepper, beef, butter):

Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, spinach, leek, sugar, pepper, beef, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.