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Pea Bouillox

A hearty beef and pea soup simmered with vegetables for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pea Bouillox

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef in a large pot with the water and heat slowly to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface and remove 1 pint of the broth for cooking the vegetables.

  3. Add 1 sliced carrot, 1 sliced turnip, the large onion, and the herbs to the remaining broth.

  4. Simmer for 4 hours, then remove the beef and keep it warm over boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup, pulping the vegetables, then cool and skim the fat.

  2. Return the soup to the heat and add noodles, boiled rice, or soaked sago.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes, then pour into a hot soup tureen and serve.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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

Round beef
Simmers into the broth, giving it rich meaty flavor and body.
Peas
Thicken the soup as they break down and add sweetness and body.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they cook into the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.

The step that matters

Skim the surface during the first boil. Fat and foam rise as the beef heats and would make the broth greasy and cloudy if left in. Skimming early keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, cabbage, tomato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, cabbage, tomato. 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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