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Green Pea Soup of India

A soup made from fresh green peas, butter, parsley, green onions, and stock, finished with fried bread pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup of India

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the peas, parsley, and green onions, and cook until thoroughly stewed.

  3. Pound the mixture in a mortar or rub through a colander.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and add enough stock to achieve desired consistency.

  5. Keep on low heat to simmer, avoiding boiling to preserve the green color.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add fried bread snippets.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  4. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 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

Green peas
Form the main body of the soup and give it its flavour and thickness when pureed.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the vegetables are first cooked gently.
Green onions
Add a mild onion aroma that builds the soup's savoury base.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a bright green note.

The step that matters

Keep the soup at a gentle simmer. Boiling can dull the bright green colour of the peas and their chlorophyll breaks down with prolonged high heat, so the soup should be kept just under a boil.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, onion, bread):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, onion, 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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