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Cream of Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from peas, milk, flour, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream of Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Cook the peas until tender.

  2. Remove the peas from heat and set half aside.

  3. Mash the other half of the peas through a colander and add the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, rub together the tablespoon of milk and flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk-flour mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Stir in the mashed peas until thick.

  5. Stir in the whole peas, sweet cream, salt, and pepper, then remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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, flavour and thickness of the soup when mashed.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the peas are blended into.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mix the flour into the milk smoothly. Flour starch swells on contact with hot liquid and forms lumps if it is not fully dispersed. A smooth paste added to steadily boiling milk, with constant stirring, gives an even, silky thickening.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, cream, 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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