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Green Pea Soup

A soup made from fresh peas, milk, butter, cream, salt, and pepper.

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

Cook the peas

  1. Cover peas with boiling water.

  2. Add boiling milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Bring to a boil, then cover and place in a Caloric cooker for 2 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Remove from cooker and strain through a sieve.

  2. Stir in cream 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.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh shelled peas
Provide the main green flavor and starch that gives the soup its body.
Milk
Adds creamy body and mild sweetness to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking the peas for 2 hours. Long, gentle heat softens the pea cell walls fully, so the peas break down and pass through the sieve smoothly. Undercooked peas leave a grainy, fibrous soup.

Swap the peas

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

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

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