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Cream Pea Soup

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

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Rub the cooked peas through a sieve.

  2. Add enough water to make 1 pint of liquid.

  3. Season the pea liquid with salt and pepper to taste.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, heat 1 pint of milk thickened with 2 teaspoons of flour mixed with a little cold milk.

  2. Cook the milk mixture for about 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the butter until melted.

  4. Add the hot pea liquid.

  5. Strain the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with salted wafers.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Form the body and bulk of the soup once rubbed smooth.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Heating the flour-thickened milk. Flour must be mixed with cold milk first so it does not clump, and the mixture should be heated gently in a double boiler so it thickens smoothly without scorching or curdling.

Swap the peas

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

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

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