Skip to main content
Main

Green Pea Soup

A soup of green peas, spinach, peppercorns, stock, cream, egg yolks, mint, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Pea Soup

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 Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the green peas, spinach, and peppercorns in the white stock for 20 minutes or until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine wire sieve.

  3. Return the soup to the pot, add cream and egg yolks, and keep hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the remaining peas, boiled soft in a little stock with salt.

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.

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

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

  2. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + minttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  4. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Peas + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavour of the soup once simmered and puréed.
White stock
Cooks the vegetables and forms the liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup gently when heated and add richness and body.
Spinach
Adds colour and a mild, earthy green flavour to the purée.

The step that matters

Keeping the soup hot after adding egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, so if the soup boils after they are added it can curdle and turn grainy. Keep it hot below a simmer and stir steadily.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, spinach, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, spinach, cream, egg. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipes