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Canned Pea Soup

A soup made with boiling water, canned green peas, pepper, salt, sugar, floured butter, and served over diced fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canned Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Add boiling water to the jar contents.

  2. Boil slowly on the back of the stove for 1.5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Cool the soup.

  5. Skim off any fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the can of green peas.

  2. Cook until tender.

  3. Pulp the peas through a colander into the soup.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and a lump of white sugar.

  5. Stir in the floured butter.

  6. Bring to a boil once more.

  7. Serve over diced fried bread in a tureen.

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

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

  2. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  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
Provide the main flavour and body; pulping them thickens the soup.
Floured butter
Adds fat and richness, and the flour helps thicken the soup as it heats.
White sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the savoury flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Pulp the peas through a colander. Pressing the cooked peas through a colander breaks down their starch and fibre so they blend into the soup, giving it a smooth, thick texture rather than a grainy one.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, butter, bread):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, butter, 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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