Skip to main content
Main

Green Pea Soup

A soup made with peas, onion, spices, milk, cream, and chicken stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Set aside 1 cup of peas and place the remainder in a saucepan with the onion, pepper, salt, sugar, and seasoning.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes, then remove the herbs.

  3. Mash the peas and add the chicken stock.

  4. Bring to a boil, then add the butter and flour mixture.

  5. Let simmer for 10 minutes and strain through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return to the stove, add the reserved peas, hot milk, and cream, and 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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 bulk of the soup, giving it its green colour and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavour and smoothing the texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness, softening the soup's body.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, silkier mouthfeel.
Chicken stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth for the soup.
Onion
Contributes aroma and gentle sweetness as it softens during simmering.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk and cream at the end. Dairy can curdle or separate and scorch if it is boiled hard, so the soup should be reheated gently once the milk and cream go in.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, sugar, butter, milk, cream, parsley. 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