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Pea Soup

A soup made with shelled peas, chicken, water, thyme, parsley, salt, pepper, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the peas, chicken, and water.

  2. Add thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. Cook until the peas are tender.

Mash and finish

  1. Remove the peas and mash them.

  2. Return the mashed peas to the pot.

  3. Stir in the butter rolled in flour.

  4. Before serving, add the 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Peas + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the body of the soup and give it its sweet, earthy flavor.
Chicken
Adds savory depth to the cooking water, giving the soup a broth base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup when heated with the butter and stirred in.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in flour. Flour thickens only when it is heated and dispersed evenly in liquid. Dropping in floury butter without stirring can leave lumps, so the flour should be worked smoothly into the hot soup before it is used.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, thyme, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, thyme, parsley, 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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