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Green Pea Soup

A hearty soup of green peas, pork or bacon, onion, thyme, and butter thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. Boil the green peas in water for 2 hours in a large pot.

  2. Strain the peas, returning the cooking liquid to the pot.

  3. Add the pork or bacon, chopped onion, thyme, salt, and pepper to the pot.

  4. Cook until the meat is done.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then add some of the soup liquid to create a paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the soup to thicken it.

  3. Serve with buttered toasted bread.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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 flavor of the soup as they cook down into the liquid.
Butter and flour
Form a paste that thickens the soup liquid when stirred in.
Pork or bacon
Adds savory, fatty flavor to the soup as it cooks in the liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the soup. Flour clumps if added dry or unblended, so it must be mixed smoothly with butter and some hot liquid first. Adding the paste gradually to the soup lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, thyme, pepper, butter, flour, bread. 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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