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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from cooked peas, water, milk, sugar, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

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 ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Mash the peas, using old ones that are too hard for the table.

  2. Add the boiling water to the mashed peas and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a strainer.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the milk, then add the strained peas, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil well, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, add the melted butter, and serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked peas
Provide the main body and flavour of the soup once mashed and strained.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the soup, mellowing the pea flavour.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a strainer. Pushing the mashed peas through a strainer removes skins and fibrous bits, giving the soup a smooth texture. Skipping this leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the peas

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

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

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