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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from green peas, milk, egg, butter, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream of Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Shell the peas and place the pods in a soup kettle with cold water.

  2. Boil the pods until tender, then drain and return the water to the kettle.

Cook the soup

  1. Add the peas and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Mash a portion of the peas in the soup and add the whole peas.

  3. Stir in the milk and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Beat the egg and mix it with the butter and flour.

  5. Gradually add this mixture to the soup, then remove from heat.

  6. Season with salt and pepper, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Green peas
Provide the main body, flavour and thickening starch of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Egg
Mixed with butter and flour, it helps thicken and enrich the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it combines with butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the thickening mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and butter-flour mixture. Stirring the egg into hot soup can scramble it. Adding the mixture gradually, with the soup off or low heat, helps it blend smoothly and thicken evenly without lumps or curdling.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, flour, pepper. 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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