Skip to main content
Main

Green Pea Soup

A soup made from green peas, butter, mint, fine meal, milk, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. Boil the green peas in ½ pint of water with seasoning and the mint.

  2. When the peas are tender, remove the mint.

  3. Add the butter.

Thicken and serve

  1. Smooth the fine meal with a little milk.

  2. Thicken the soup.

  3. Let it cook for 2 to 3 minutes.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the soup and give it its flavour and body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Fine meal
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Milk
Liquid that helps the fine meal disperse evenly before it is stirred in.
Mint
Adds a fresh aroma that flavours the cooking water.

The step that matters

Smooth the fine meal with a little milk. Starch added dry clumps when it hits hot liquid, and the lumps do not dissolve. Mixing it into a small amount of cool milk first lets the particles separate, so it thickens the soup evenly.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, milk, pepper. 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

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes