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Green Pea Soup

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

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

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

Cook the peas

  1. Cover the peas with hot water and boil until easily mashed, about 30 minutes.

Make and serve the soup

  1. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Add the mashed peas to the butter and flour mixture.

  3. Stir in the cream and milk, then season with salt and pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil, strain the soup, and serve.

  5. Top each serving with a tablespoon of whipped cream 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 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
Provide the main body, flavour and colour of the soup once mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when blended with butter into a smooth paste.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Milk
Thins the mixture to a pourable soup while adding mild sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Blend the butter and flour until smooth. If the flour is not fully worked into the butter before the liquids go in, it clumps and forms lumps. A smooth paste disperses evenly through the liquid, giving a uniformly thick soup.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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