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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from peas, milk, butter, flour, and water, seasoned to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the pea base

  1. Combine the peas and water in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Make the white sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

Blend and serve

  1. Combine the pea mixture with the milk mixture and blend until smooth.

  2. Season to taste and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 flavour and body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce as its starch cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the roux. Adding milk gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth. Adding it all at once can create lumps that blending may not fully remove.

Swap the peas

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

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

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