Name: German Pea Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart dried sugar peas; good stock soup; butter for frying; toast

Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

German Pea Soup

Ingredients

1 quart dried sugar peas
good stock soup
butter for frying
toast

Directions

Boil the dried sugar peas until soft.
Pass the peas through a sieve.
Thin the pea puree with good stock soup.
Boil the mixture well.
Serve with pieces of toast fried in 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.

Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,887 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + peastop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,928 recipes

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