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Pea Soup

A soup made with chicken or veal, peas, pepper, sea salt, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the hulls with the chicken or veal.

  2. Strain the liquid.

Finish the soup

  1. Add a handful of peas and boil to thicken the soup.

  2. When done, add some separately cooked peas.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, cream, and butter to taste.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or knuckle of veal
Gives the broth savory flavour and body as it simmers.
Peas
Their starch thickens the soup as they cook and break down.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and rounds out the seasoning.

The step that matters

Add a handful of peas and boil to thicken the soup. Peas are starchy, so boiling them until they soften releases starch that thickens the broth. Stopping too early leaves the soup thin, while boiling too hard can make it gluey or dull in colour.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, cream, butter. 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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