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Pea Soup

A simple soup made from split yellow peas, butter, flour, and optional meat bones or onion.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the dried peas in cold water, adding ½ cup of cold water every 15 minutes until soft.

  2. Rub the peas through a fine colander using a potato masher.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour together until smooth.

  2. Add the strained pea soup to the butter and flour mixture, stirring to combine.

  3. If using, add meat bones after the peas start boiling.

  4. If using onion, fry it in the saucepan before adding the peas.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dried split yellow peas
Provide the main body and starch that give the soup its thick texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter into a smooth base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.
Meat bones
Add savoury depth and body to the soup as they simmer with the peas.

The step that matters

Stirring the soup into the butter and flour. Flour clumps if liquid is added too quickly or without stirring. Blending the roux until smooth first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, flour, meat):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

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