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Green Pea Soup

A simple soup made with milk, peas, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, cream together the mashed peas, butter, and flour.

  3. Add the creamed mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup before serving.

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

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

  5. Milk + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Peas
Provide the main body, flavor, and green color of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the creamed mixture to the boiling milk. Flour starch clumps when it meets hot liquid undispersed. Mixing it smoothly into a paste first, then adding it to the boiling milk while stirring, lets each granule hydrate and swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened soup instead of lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

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