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Green Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from green peas, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash the peas and cook them until soft in 1 quart of boiling water.

  2. Mash the peas in the cooking water.

  3. Strain the mashed peas.

Make the soup

  1. Add the milk or cream to the strained peas.

  2. Melt the butter, then add the flour and seasonings to it.

  3. Combine the butter mixture with the pea liquid and cook until creamy.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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, color, and vegetal flavor of the soup.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the soup a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor, and forms the base for the thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and sets when heated with the butter and liquid.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the savory and grassy notes of the peas.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour together before adding the pea liquid. Flour must be cooked in melted butter so its starch can swell evenly when liquid is added. Stirring it smooth and cooking it through prevents lumps and removes the raw, pasty taste of uncooked flour.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, milk, butter, flour, 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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