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Green-pea Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

  1. Cover the green peas with hot water and boil with the onion until they mash easily, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Mash the peas and add the stock or water.

  3. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together until smooth but not brown.

  4. Add the butter and flour mixture to the peas, then stir in the cream and milk.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and let it boil once.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup and serve, adding whipped cream just before serving for an improvement.

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 + 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Form the body of the soup as they break down and thicken it when mashed.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux, they thicken the soup and give it a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the flavour, loosening the soup's body.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour until smooth but not brown. Cooking flour in fat, stirred until smooth, lets starch swell evenly so the soup thickens without lumps. Browning changes the flavour and weakens thickening power.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, cream, milk, 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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