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Greex Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from green peas, onion, herbs, and a butter‑flour roux, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Greex Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine 2 quarts of green peas and 4 quarts of water in a large pot.

  2. Boil for 2 hours, adding boiling water as needed.

  3. Strain the mixture, returning the liquid to the pot.

  4. Rub the peas through a sieve and add them back to the pot.

Season and finish

  1. Add the chopped onion, mint, and parsley.

  2. Boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. In a small bowl, mix 1 teaspoon of flour with 2 tablespoons of butter. Stir in ¼ teaspoon of pepper and 2 teaspoons of salt.

  4. Carefully stir the butter mixture into the boiling soup.

  5. Serve with well-buttered slices of toasted bread.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Mint + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the body of the soup as they cook down and are rubbed through a sieve.
Butter
Adds richness and body, carrying the flour that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when mixed with butter and stirred in.
Onion
Adds savory flavor to the soup base.

The step that matters

Carefully stir the butter mixture into the boiling soup. Flour mixed with butter added to boiling liquid can clump if dropped in quickly. Stirring steadily as it goes in helps it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, mint, parsley, butter, flour, pepper, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, mint, parsley, butter, flour, pepper, 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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