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German Pea Soup

A thickened soup of peas and chicken broth flavored with salt and sugar, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

German Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, mix 3 ounces of sifted flour with 1 quart of chicken broth to create a thickening.

  2. In another saucepan, boil 2 quarts of chicken broth.

  3. Stir the thickening into the boiling broth.

  4. Add salt and sugar to taste, along with 1 quart of well-washed fresh shelled peas.

  5. Continue stirring until the soup boils.

  6. Simmer until the peas are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim the soup, pour it into a tureen, and stir in 1.5 ounces of butter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavor.
Fresh shelled peas
Provide the main flavor and become tender as the soup simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring the thickening into the boiling broth. Adding flour mixture to hot liquid without constant stirring can form lumps, because starch granules clump before they disperse evenly. Stirring as it goes in keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, chicken, sugar, butter. 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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