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Winter Green Pea Soup

A soup made from dried green peas, soda, water, salt, mint, sugar, butter, and fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Winter Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash the peas and soak them in water with the carbonate of soda for 12-14 hours.

Cook and strain

  1. Drain the peas and boil them in the boiling water with salt until tender.

  2. Remove any scum that rises, then add a little dried mint.

  3. Press the mixture through a coarse sieve and bring it to a boil again.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the sugar, salt, pepper, and fresh butter.

  2. Serve with dried mint and fried bread cubes.

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

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

  2. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried marrowfat green peas
Form the body of the soup, thickening into a smooth purée when pressed through a sieve.
Carbonate of soda
Softens the pea skins during soaking, helping the peas break down more easily.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury, earthy flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Press the mixture through a coarse sieve. Pressing the cooked peas breaks them into a fine purée; if they are under-cooked or not pressed well, the soup will stay grainy and uneven in texture.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, sugar, pepper, butter. 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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