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French Green Pea Soup

A soup made with green peas, onions, herbs, spinach juice, butter, and young peas, served over toasted bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

French Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea base

  1. Combine the green peas, sliced onions, marjoram, basil, mint, and water in a soup pot.

  2. Boil slowly until the peas are completely soft.

  3. Mash the peas against the pot sides to extract flavor.

  4. Strain the liquid into a clean pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Prepare spinach juice by pounding spinach in a mortar while the soup is boiling.

  2. Add the spinach juice, butter, and young peas to the strained liquid.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne.

  4. Boil until the last peas are soft but not broken.

  5. Serve the soup over the toasted bread squares in a tureen.

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. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

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

  3. Marjoram + minttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Basil + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  5. Basil + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Break down into flavor and body, giving the soup its main substance and color.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the soup a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Young peas
Added late so they stay bright and tender, adding fresh texture to the finished soup.
Onions
Build savory depth as they soften in the cooking liquid.
Spinach juice
Contributes green color and a mild vegetal flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil until the last peas are soft but not broken. Overcooking breaks down the young peas and turns them mushy, while undercooking leaves them starchy and raw-tasting. Gentle simmering keeps their shape and texture.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, onion, marjoram, basil, spinach, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, marjoram, basil, spinach, butter, flour. 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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