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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with shelled peas, chicken, water, herbs, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the shelled peas, chicken, and water.

  2. Add thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook until the peas are tender, then remove them from the pot.

  4. Mash the peas and return them to the pot.

  5. Stir in the butter rolled in flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add the cream.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Peas + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled peas
Form the main body of the soup and, once mashed, thicken it and give it its flavour.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter together thicken the soup and add richness as it heats.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.
Chicken
Adds savoury meaty flavour to the broth the peas cook in.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in flour. Flour clumps if dropped in raw. Coating it in butter helps it disperse, and the soup needs to stay at a simmer while it is stirred so the starch swells and thickens evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, thyme, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, thyme, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, cream. 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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