Skip to main content
Main

Grekn Pea Soup

A soup made with chicken, peas, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Grekn Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the chicken, water, parsley, onion, pepper, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Add the butter and bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, add the shelled peas and cook until they can be mashed.

Mash and thicken

  1. Remove the peas and mash them.

  2. Strain the mash through a colander back into the soup.

  3. Let the soup boil for a short time, then stir in the flour mixed with a little butter.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the cream.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavor once mashed into the broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a smoother, heavier body.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, milder finish to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor, and helps blend the flour smoothly.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour mixed with a little butter should be stirred in while the soup is boiling, so it thickens evenly. Added to cold liquid or dropped in dry, it clumps and leaves a grainy texture.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, onion, pepper, butter, flour, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes