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Pea Goup

A lamb and pea soup thickened with cream and flour, seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pea Goup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the lamb in 1 gallon of water for 1 hour.

  2. Add 1 quart of peas and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Thicken the mixture with cream and flour.

  5. If desired, add dumplings about 10 minutes before serving.

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

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

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

Lamb
Provides the main meat flavour as it simmers into the broth.
Peas
Form the body of the soup and add sweetness and earthy flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smoother, heavier soup as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the thickened soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cream and flour. Flour needs to be cooked in hot liquid to swell and thicken properly, and adding cream to a boiling soup can cause it to curdle or separate. Adding it gently and keeping the heat moderate helps the soup stay smooth.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, egg, butter, pepper, cream, flour. 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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