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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from peas, milk, and butter, topped with diced fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Open the can of peas and drain the liquid.

  2. Cover the peas with cold water and let them sit for 30 minutes, then drain again.

Make the soup

  1. Place the peas in a saucepan with 1 pint of water and boil until they are reduced to a pulp.

  2. Rub the pea mixture through a colander.

  3. In a separate pot, thicken 1 pint of milk with 1 teaspoon of flour mixed with 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Stir the pea puree into the thickened milk and cook for 1 minute.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then transfer to a heated tureen.

  6. Top with diced fried bread just before serving.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Form the bulk of the soup and, once pulped, give it body and a green pea flavour.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds richness and smoothness.
Flour
Thickens the milk, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with the flour to help thicken the milk.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in the fat before the liquid is added, or it stays starchy and lumpy. The thickened milk then gives the soup its smooth, velvety body.

Swap the peas

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

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

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