Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from cooked peas, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Press the cooked peas through a colander.

  2. In a double boiler, combine the peas and milk.

  3. Add the bay leaf and onion juice or grated onion.

  4. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour.

Make the soup

  1. Add the butter‑flour mixture to the soup, stirring until thick and smooth, about 10 minutes.

  2. Season with salt and white pepper, then 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.

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. Peas + oniontop 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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 flavor, and thicken the soup when pressed through a colander.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base and adds richness and softness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps bind with flour to form a roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and milk.
Onion juice or grated onion
Adds a mild aromatic onion flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the butter‑flour mixture. Stirring constantly as the mixture goes in keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, evenly thickened soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, milk, onion, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes