Skip to main content
Main

Cocoa

A pea and potato soup thickened with flour and flavored with dripping, sugar, pepper, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cocoa

Why it works: Peas and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,016 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Cocoa

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 2 pints of water, 2 oz of green peas, and 1 cold potato, chopped, in a pot.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and 2 oz of dripping.

  3. Season with ½ teaspoon of sugar, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste. Bring to a simmer.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes.

  5. Stir in ½ cup of milk. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

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. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 vegetable body and sweet, fresh pea flavour to the soup.
Potato
Breaks down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the soup more body.
Dripping
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the soup a rich mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour with the dripping before adding liquid to the pot. Flour needs to be well dispersed to avoid lumps, and cooking it lightly in fat helps it thicken smoothly. Here the flour is added with the dripping and the vegetables, so stirring well as the soup heats keeps it evenly blended.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, sugar, pepper, milk. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes