Skip to main content
Main

Green Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from peas, onions, butter, milk, and cream, seasoned with pepper, salt, sugar, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Make the soup base

  1. Set aside 1 cup of peas.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine the remaining peas, onion, pepper, salt, sugar, and seasoning.

  3. Let simmer for 30 minutes, then remove the herbs.

  4. Mash the peas and add the chicken stock.

Thicken and finish

  1. Bring to a boil, then add the butter and flour mixed together.

  2. Let simmer for 10 minutes and strain through a sieve.

  3. Return to the stove, add the whole peas, hot milk, and cream, and serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Peas
Provide the main body, colour and flavour of the soup.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup into a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk and cream
Add richness and a softer, creamier mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Chicken stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to the puréed peas.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be cooked in the hot fat and blended into the liquid while it boils, otherwise it stays starchy and can form lumps. Simmering afterwards cooks out the raw flour taste and fully thickens the soup.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, sugar, butter, flour, milk, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes