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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from peas, onion, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cream of Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea base

  1. Drain peas and add sugar and cold water.

  2. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve, then reheat.

Make the cream

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter or drippings and mix with flour to create a roux.

  2. Scald the milk with the onion, then remove the onion.

  3. Add the milk to the pea mixture and stir well.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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

Peas
Form the main body and flavor of the soup once simmered and sieved.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a roux that gives the soup its creamy body.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the soup.
Butter or drippings
Carries fat for the roux and adds richness and flavor.

The step that matters

Make the roux before adding milk. Cooking flour in fat until it is smooth lets it thicken evenly. Adding milk to a poorly mixed roux can leave lumps, and stirring the milk into the pea mixture well keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the peas

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

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

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