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Green Pea Soup

A simple soup made from boiled green peas, onion, butter, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the peas in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the pods.

  3. Add the peas along with any scraps of meat or bone and the onion.

  4. When the peas are soft, strain through a colander.

  5. Mix the butter with the flour, then add the butter-flour mixture to the soup along with pepper and salt.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the soup once cooked and strained.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic flavour as it softens in the cooking water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and smoothing the mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with the butter and liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture to the soup. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unevenly. Mixing it with butter first and stirring it in well lets the starch disperse, then the soup needs to simmer so the starch swells and thickens smoothly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, pepper. 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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