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A creamy pea soup made with butter, peas, stock, arrowroot, cream, and served with fried bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a kettle, melt the butter.

  2. Add the peas, bay leaf, parsley, onion, and stock.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes, then press through a sieve back into the kettle.

  4. Moisten the arrowroot in a small amount of water, then add it to the soup. Stir and bring to a boil.

  5. Add the cream, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread squares.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and flavour of the soup once pressed through a sieve.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour at the start, carrying the aromatics.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot slurry. Arrowroot must be fully moistened in cold water before it goes into the hot soup; added dry or lumpy it clumps and stays grainy. Stir well and bring to a boil so it thickens evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, onion, arrowroot, cream, pepper, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, onion, arrowroot, cream, pepper, bread. 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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