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An Excellent Green Peas Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, stock, sugar, and optional fried bread or asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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An Excellent Green Peas Soup

Why it works: Peas and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 808 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

An Excellent Green Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Select 3 pints of fresh, large green peas and boil them with ½ teaspoon of carbonate of soda until tender, about 25 to 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas and add them to 2 quarts of boiling beef or veal stock. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a clean pan and bring it to a boil.

  4. Add salt if needed and 1 small teaspoon of pounded sugar. Remove any scum.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with small pieces of fried bread, if desired.

  2. For a variation, add ¾ pint of well‑drained asparagus points just before serving.

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 + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  2. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Beef + asparagustop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + asparagustop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body and flavour of the soup once cooked and sieved.
Carbonate of soda
Softens the peas so they cook to tender and break down easily.
Beef or veal stock
Supplies the liquid and savoury base for the soup.
Pounded sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the savoury stock.

The step that matters

Boiling the peas with carbonate of soda. Carbonate of soda raises the pH, which helps the peas soften fully. Too little leaves them firm, and the soup will not pass smoothly through the sieve.

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beef, sugar, bread):

  1. Asparagusthe original
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beef, sugar, 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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