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Soup

Pea and Rice Soup

A soup made with green peas, rice, milk, stock, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Pea and Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the green peas and let them sit in a bowl for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the rice in the milk until soft.

  3. Skim the stock and bring it to a boil.

Make the soup

  1. Add the drained peas and the rice to the boiling stock.

  2. Stew the mixture slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Season to taste.

  4. Stir in the butter cut into flour.

  5. Simmer for an additional 5 minutes before serving.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 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
Form the body of the soup and give it its main flavour and texture.
Rice
Softens while cooking and thickens the soup, adding body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to add richness and a softer, creamier texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour thicken the soup smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed with butter and stirred in.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter cut into flour. Flour clumps if added straight to hot liquid. Working it into butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, 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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