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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas, milk, cream, butter, 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

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell the green peas and cover them with water.

  2. Boil until tender.

  3. Pour into a colander and mash through with a masher.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the milk, cream, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bring to a boil and serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the soup, and their starch thickens it as they cook and mash.
Milk
Adds liquid and softness, mellowing the pea flavor into a smoother soup.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, silkier mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor and smoothing the texture.

The step that matters

Boil the peas until fully tender before mashing. Peas that are only partly cooked keep firm starch and cell walls, so they mash unevenly and strain poorly through the colander. Fully softened peas break down into a smooth pulp that gives the soup an even body.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, butter, egg, 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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