Skip to main content
Main

German Pea Soup

A thickened chicken broth soup with peas, butter, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

German Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, gradually mix 3 ounces of sifted flour with 1 quart of chicken broth to create a thickening.

  2. In another pot, bring 2 quarts of chicken broth to a boil.

  3. Stir the thickening into the boiling broth.

  4. Add a little coarse sea salt and sugar, then add 1 quart of well-washed fresh shelled peas.

  5. Continue stirring until the soup boils, then simmer until the peas are tender.

  6. Skim off any foam, pour the soup into a tureen, and stir in 1.5 ounces of butter.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Sifted flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup its body.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavor of the dish.
Fresh shelled peas
Provide the main flavor and bulk, softening as the soup simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir the thickening into the boiling broth. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Mixing it smoothly into the flour-broth slurry first and stirring while adding it keeps the soup lump-free and evenly thickened.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, chicken, sugar, butter. 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

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes