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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made with peas, milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and onion juice.

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

Prepare the peas

  1. Heat the peas in their own liquid or cook them in boiling, salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the liquid and rub the peas through a strainer.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk and mix in the fat and flour to form a smooth paste.

  2. Cook the mixture for 1 minute, then add the peas, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil for a few minutes and 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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 pureed through a strainer.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Butter or other fat
Carries flavor and enriches the texture of the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy body when cooked with the fat.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and fat into the milk. Flour lumps form if it is added to hot liquid without being blended smoothly into the fat first. Forming a smooth paste before adding the milk, then cooking it briefly, lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

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