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Cream of Pea Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the peas

  1. Drain peas from their liquid.

  2. Cook peas until tender.

  3. Rub the cooked peas through a sieve.

Make the milk base

  1. Scald milk.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour.

  3. Add salt and pepper to the milk mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the pea puree with the milk mixture.

  2. Stir in the butter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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
Form the main body and flavor of the soup as a smooth puree.
Milk
Makes up the liquid base and gives the soup a creamy, mild richness.
Flour
Thickens the scalded milk so the soup has body rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, silkier mouthfeel and a richer finish.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot milk long enough to swell its starch and thicken evenly. Adding it lumpy or without enough stirring leaves raw, pasty clumps that the cook cannot easily smooth out later.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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