Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Green Peas, String Beans, Corn, Asparagus, and Celery

A creamy soup made from green peas, string beans, corn, asparagus, celery, stock, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Green Peas, String Beans, Corn, Asparagus, and Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the chosen vegetable until soft, then press through a sieve.

  2. Dilute the vegetable pulp with the stock in a pot.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, make a roux by melting the butter and whisking in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the roux to the vegetable and stock mixture, season with salt and pepper, and strain again for smoothness.

  3. Return to heat, add the cream, and beat with an egg whisk until light.

  4. Serve very hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Vegetable pulp
Provides the main body and green vegetable flavour of the soup.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury flavour that thins the pulp.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter as a roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the roux. Flour must be cooked in the butter and whisked smooth before adding the liquid; otherwise it clumps and leaves a raw floury taste and lumps in the soup.

Swap the peas

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

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

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes