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Green Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from green peas, onion, butter, flour, milk, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Make the soup base

  1. Set aside 1 cup of peas.

  2. Place the remaining peas in a saucepan with the onion, pepper, salt, sugar, and bay leaf.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the herbs and mash the peas.

  5. Add the chicken stock.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Mix the butter and flour together, then add the mixture to the soup and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  8. Strain the soup through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return it to the stove.

  2. Add the reserved peas, hot milk, and cream.

  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.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sweet vegetable flavour of the soup.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup to a smooth, creamy body.
Milk and cream
Add richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Chicken stock
Adds savoury depth as the liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Raw flour must be cooked in the hot soup for the full simmer, otherwise it tastes pasty and fails to thicken smoothly. Stirring it in well prevents lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

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