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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from peas, water, butter, flour, salt, pepper, sugar, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash the peas.

  2. Cook the peas in 1 pint of boiling water until soft.

  3. Mash the peas with the cooking water.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add the remaining liquid to the strained peas.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and cook until thick.

Combine and finish

  1. Combine the white sauce with the pea mixture.

  2. Stir in the milk or 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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
Provide the main body, colour and earthy sweetness of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a white sauce that gives the soup body.
Milk or cream
Adds softness and creaminess, mellowing the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. The flour must cook in the melted butter until thick so it loses its raw starch taste and thickens properly. Stopping early leaves a floury flavour and a thin sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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