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Qreen Pea Soup

A soup made with green peas, onion, stock, milk or cream, butter, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

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 ↓

Qreen Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the stock, green peas, and onion together for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the onion and strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Return the strained soup to the heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the milk or cream, butter, flour, and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Boil for 2-3 minutes and serve.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and sweet, vegetable flavour of the soup.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly so it feels more velvety.

The step that matters

Boil for 2-3 minutes after adding the milk or cream. Once dairy and flour are stirred in, boiling too long or too hard can scorch the bottom or cause the dairy to separate. A brief, controlled boil cooks the flour so it thickens without a raw taste.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, butter, flour, 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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