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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from peas, milk, cream, flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea puree

  1. Drain the peas and cook until tender.

  2. Rub the peas through a sieve to create a puree.

Make the milk base

  1. In a saucepan, scald the milk and cream, then whisk in the flour to thicken.

  2. Add the salt and pepper to the milk mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the pea puree with the milk mixture.

  2. Stir in the butter until melted.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 pea flavour of the soup once pureed.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the puree is combined into.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel from its fat.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup has body rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, rich flavour when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour into the scalded milk and cream. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without thorough whisking. Whisking it in steadily while the liquid is hot lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken smoothly, giving the soup an even body.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, flour, pepper, 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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