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CanNnED Pea Sour

A simple soup made from canned peas, milk, flour, butter, and seasonings, served hot with croutons.

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 ↓

CanNnED Pea Sour

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the can of peas through a colander.

  2. In a pot, bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Add the mashed peas to the boiling milk.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the butter until smooth.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the soup to thicken it.

  3. Serve hot with croutons.

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
Provide the main body and flavour of the soup once mashed.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and adds creaminess.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred in, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the soup. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Mixing it smooth with butter first lets it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

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