Skip to main content
Dessert

Green Pea Souffle

A baked green pea soufflé made with peas, butter, milk, eggs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Mash the cooked peas while hot and season well with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the butter and milk to the mashed peas.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix them into the pea mixture.

Fold and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the pea mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air for lift, and yolks enrich the custard-like base for structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that the eggs set into a tender, creamy texture.
Cooked peas
Provide the main body, flavor and green color of the soufflé base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel and flavor.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites gently. Egg white foam holds the air that makes a soufflé rise. Stirring or deflating it vigorously knocks out air bubbles, so the soufflé bakes up flat and dense instead of light.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk, egg. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes