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Green Pea Soup

A soup made with butter, ham, stock, green peas, onions, cabbage lettuce, spinach, younger peas, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the ham and cook on low heat for 1 hour.

  3. Add 2 quarts of stock, the green peas, onions, and lettuces. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 hour.

Add the greens and finish

  1. Blanch the spinach. Strain and squeeze it dry between two plates.

  2. Rub the soup through a fine sieve along with the spinach to give it a green color.

  3. In a separate pot, boil the younger peas in 1 pint of stock. Once done, add them to the soup.

  4. Add a little sugar and salt to taste. Bring the soup to a boil.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

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

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to enrich the soup and carry flavor from the start of cooking.
Green peas
Give the soup its main body and sweet, vegetal flavor when cooked and puréed.
Onions
Break down during long cooking to add sweetness and depth to the base.
Lettuces
Soften as they cook, adding body and a mild, fresh flavor to the purée.
Spinach
Adds bright green color and fresh flavor when blanched and rubbed through the sieve.
Ham
Cooked slowly in butter to season the stock with savory, meaty flavor.

The step that matters

Rub the soup through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked soup through a fine sieve breaks down the peas, onions and lettuce into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy texture and dulls the green color the spinach is meant to give.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, onion, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, sugar):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, onion, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, 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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