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Qreen Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, water, milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Qreen Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put the peas into 1 pint of boiling water and cook until soft.

  2. Mash the peas in the water they boiled in and strain, gradually adding 1 pint of water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil again.

Thicken and season

  1. In a small saucepan, cook the butter and flour without browning.

  2. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the boiling soup.

  3. Add salt, pepper, sugar, and hot milk.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

Green peas
Provide the main body and flavor of the soup when mashed and strained.
Butter and flour
Cooked together as a roux, they thicken the soup smoothly.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the finished soup.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savory peas.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the boiling soup. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unless it is well combined first. Stir the roux in steadily and keep stirring while the soup returns to a boil so the starch disperses evenly and thickens without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

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