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Green Pea Souv

A quick green pea soup made with peas, stock, spices, onion, butter, flour, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Green Pea Souv

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine peas, boiling water or stock, mace, bay leaf, pepper, salt, and onion.

  2. Simmer for 2 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a puree.

Thicken and serve

  1. In another saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour.

  2. Add the pea puree and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve the soup with a tablespoon of whipped cream on each plate.

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

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provide the main body and green flavour of the soup once puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the butter and liquid as it simmers.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the hot soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the melted butter. Flour must be cooked briefly in the fat before liquid is added, so the starch swells smoothly without lumps. Stirring constantly keeps it from clumping and removes any raw floury taste.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, pepper, onion, 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.

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