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Cream of Pea Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 base

  1. Drain and rinse the peas thoroughly.

  2. Add the peas, sugar, onion, and cold water to a pot.

  3. Let the mixture simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Reheat the strained mixture.

Thicken and finish

  1. Cook the butter and flour together in a separate pan to thicken the soup.

  2. Scald the milk.

  3. Add the scalded milk to the pea mixture.

  4. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

  5. Stir in the cream and egg yolk just before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavor of the soup once simmered and sieved.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the soup, adding body and smoothness.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and egg yolk just before serving. Egg yolk thickens when heated and can curdle or turn grainy if it boils. Adding it off the heat, just before serving, keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the peas

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

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

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