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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from boiled peas, onions, herbs, and butter, thickened with butter and flour if desired.

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

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea base

  1. Boil the peas in 1½ gallons of water until perfectly done.

  2. Remove the peas, mash them, and strain through a colander.

  3. Pour a little boiled water over the mashed peas to separate the pulp from the hull.

  4. Return the strained peas to the boiling water.

Season and finish

  1. Chop the onion(s) and fry them in a small amount of lard until soft.

  2. Add the fried onions, thyme, parsley, pepper, and salt to the soup.

  3. Just before serving, stir in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. If the soup is too thin, cream a little butter and flour together to thicken.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the body and most of the flavour of the soup once mashed and strained.
Onion
Frying softens it and adds savoury sweetness to the soup base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter, giving it more body if it is too thin.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour. Adding butter just before serving keeps its flavour fresh, while flour must be creamed with butter first so it blends without lumps and thickens evenly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, butter, flour. 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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