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Green-pea Soup

A soup made from boiled green peas and chicken stock, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 chicken

  1. Pick and singe the chicken, then wipe it with a wet towel.

  2. Draw the chicken without breaking the intestines and truss it.

  3. Place the chicken in a saucepan with enough boiling water to cover it.

  4. Remove scum as it rises and simmer the chicken slowly until tender.

Prepare the peas and paste

  1. Shell the green peas and boil them in salted water until tender, then drain and cool in cold water.

  2. Mix the butter and flour into a smooth paste.

Make the soup

  1. Once the chicken is tender, remove it from the broth and reserve for another dish.

  2. Add the drained peas to the broth along with the butter and flour mixture, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Add water or milk if needed to achieve a creamy consistency.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil, season to taste, 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.

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 + milktop 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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Green peas
Provide the main body and flavor of the soup, thickening it as they break down.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the paste blend smoothly into the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a creamy consistency when cooked with the butter.
Chicken
Gives the broth its savory, meaty base as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour paste to the broth. Flour clumps if dropped in raw or added too fast. Whisking it into a smooth paste first, then stirring it into hot broth, lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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