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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from canned green peas, onion, butter, and beef stock, seasoned with salt and served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cream of Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and add the onion.

  2. Cook slowly for 2 hours.

Make the soup

  1. Mash the peas.

  2. Strain the mashed peas into the pot.

  3. Add the beef stock.

  4. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Season with salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with a thin slice of lemon in each bowl.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Peas + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,044 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provides the bulk and body of the soup once mashed and strained.
Onion
Cooked slowly, it softens and turns sweet, building the soup's flavor base.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and gives the soup a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Beef stock
Adds savory depth and thins the puree to soup consistency.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion slowly. Low, slow heat softens the onion and draws out its natural sugars without scorching it. Rushing this stage with high heat can brown or burn the onion, leaving a bitter taste that carries through the whole soup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, onion, butter, beef):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, butter, beef. 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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