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Green Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from green peas, pork or bacon, onion, thyme, and thickened with a butter and flour roux.

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

Make the soup

  1. Boil the green peas in water for 2 hours.

  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.

  2. Combine the roux with some of the soup liquid.

  3. Stir the mixture into the pot to thicken the soup.

  4. 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
Form the main body of the soup and give it its flavor and thickness as they cook down.
Butter
Carries fat into the roux, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux and stirred into the liquid.
Pork or bacon
Adds savory, smoky fat and meaty flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the soup as it cooks with the peas.

The step that matters

Mixing the roux into the soup. Flour clumps if added directly to hot liquid. Blending it with butter first, then with some soup liquid before stirring it in, helps it disperse evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

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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