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Green Pea Soup

A creamy soup made with 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; place the remaining peas in a stew pan with the onion, pepper, salt, sugar, and bay leaf.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the herbs and mash the peas.

  4. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together.

  2. Add to the soup and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup through a sieve, then return it to the stove.

  4. Add the whole peas, hot milk, and cream.

  5. 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
Form the main body and green flavour of the soup.
Butter
Enriches the soup and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter.
Chicken stock
Provides the savoury liquid that carries the soup's flavour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook the butter and flour together before adding them to the soup. Cooking the flour in fat drives off its raw, pasty taste and helps it thicken the soup evenly without 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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