Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Pea-Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chop the celery, onions, carrots, and turnips.
Cook and strain
Boil the vegetables with the peas until soft.
Pass the mixture through a sieve, moistening with the cooking liquid.
Serve
Fry bread cubes in hot lard until golden, then drain on blotting paper.
Serve hot with dried mint and toasted or fried bread cubes.
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.
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Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Peas + minttop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,137 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 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
- Peas
- Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup when passed through a sieve.
- Turnips
- Add earthy sweetness and body to the vegetable base.
- Carrots
- Contribute natural sweetness and colour to the soup.
- Onions
- Build savoury depth as they soften during boiling.
- Hot lard
- Fries the bread cubes, adding fat for richness and golden browning.
The step that matters
Pass the mixture through a sieve, moistening with the cooking liquid. Sieving breaks down the cooked peas and vegetables into a smooth purée; adding cooking liquid keeps it loose enough to pass through and sets the final texture.
Swap the mint
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, onion, carrot, turnip, peas, bread):
- Parsleyfits better
- Thymefits better
- Marjoramfits better
- Mintthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, carrot, turnip, peas, bread. 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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