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Puree of Peas

A smooth pea puree made with peas, onion, milk, butter, flour, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Puree of Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell and wash the peas.

  2. Put the peas and onion into the boiling water.

  3. Cook uncovered until the peas are soft.

Make the soup

  1. Rub the peas through a sieve into a saucepan.

  2. Add milk and seasoning to the pureed peas.

Thicken and finish

  1. Rub the flour into the melted butter.

  2. Cook until it froths.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling soup.

  4. Cook for a few 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.

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. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, flavour and green colour of the puree.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the puree's flavour.
Flour
Starch thickens the soup as it cooks in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour, helping it blend smoothly.
Onion
Adds a savoury aroma that flavours the cooking water.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if it meets hot liquid without being fully mixed into the fat first. Cooking the flour and butter until frothy removes raw flour taste, and stirring it into boiling liquid lets starch granules disperse and swell evenly into a smooth thickened soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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