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Cream of Green Peas

A creamy soup made from green peas, onion, milk, butter, flour, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cream of Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Put the green peas and onion slice in a saucepan and cover with boiling water.

  2. Cook until tender.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Press through a puree sieve, retaining the cooking liquid.

  5. Return the puree to the saucepan.

  6. Bring to a boil.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the rich milk, salt, white pepper, and cayenne pepper.

  2. In a small bowl, rub the butter into the flour. Add a little of the soup liquid and stir until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the soup.

  4. Let it come to a boil.

  5. Stir in the whipped cream.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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, flavour and green colour of the soup.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the soup.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the soup as it is heated with the liquid.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a silky, rich finish when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter-flour paste into the soup. Rubbing the butter into the flour and blending it with some hot liquid before adding it helps prevent lumps. Stirring until smooth and then bringing the soup to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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