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Green Pea Soup

A soup made with peas, milk, butter, flour, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Prepare the peas

  1. Drain peas from liquid, rinse in cold water, and simmer in boiling water for 20 minutes.

Make the white sauce

  1. Put the onion in the milk and scald it.

  2. Make a white sauce by melting the butter, adding the flour, and mixing well.

  3. Combine the white sauce with the peas.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the soup and serve with croutons.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the soup's creamy texture.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce and adds a rich, smooth flavour.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the melted butter into a white sauce that gives the soup body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the melted butter. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter and mixed well so it forms a smooth roux. Without this, the flour stays lumpy and leaves a raw, pasty taste in the thickened soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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