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Pea Soup

A soup made from soaked Scotch peas, stock, salt, sugar, and flour, cooked and canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the Scotch peas overnight.

  2. Steam the soaked peas for 35 minutes at 230°F (110°C).

  3. Add half of the soup stock to the peas and pass through a pulping machine using a 16 mesh wire cloth.

Make the soup

  1. Stir in the remaining soup stock, sugar, and salt.

  2. Make a paste with the flour and add it to the soup.

  3. Cook the soup in a kettle until it begins to thicken.

Can and process

  1. Fill into cans, cap, and exhaust for 3 minutes.

  2. Process the cans for 40 minutes at 235°F (113°C).

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Peas + wheattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + wheattop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Scotch peas
Provide the main body and bulk of the soup once pulped.
Soup stock
Supplies the liquid that carries the pulped peas into a soup.
Wheat flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory pea flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the soup until it begins to thicken. Flour paste added to hot soup can clump if not stirred in well, and starch only thickens fully when heated, so the soup should be stirred and cooked until it visibly thickens.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wheat, 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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