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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, onion, butter, flour, mirepoix, mint, sugar, and butter, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil peas in water until cooked, then retain the liquid.

  2. In a stewpan, melt butter and sauté chopped onion until dissolved.

  3. Add flour and stir, then pour in peas and their liquid.

  4. Add Mirepoix and simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine strainer back into the stewpan.

  6. Add mint, sugar, and a small piece of butter, then bring to a quick boil while stirring to prevent burning.

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

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

  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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 sweet, vegetal flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps soften the onion without browning it.
Onion
Builds aromatic savoury flavour as it softens in the butter.
Sugar
Rounds out the flavour and balances the vegetal taste of the peas.

The step that matters

Stirring during the final quick boil. Starch-thickened liquids with sugar and butter scorch easily on the base of the pan. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents burning and off flavours.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, flour, mint, sugar. 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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