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Green Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from peas, milk, cream, and chicken stock, seasoned with onion, pepper, salt, sugar, bay leaf, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Green Pea Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Set aside 1 cup of peas and place the remainder in a saucepan with the onion, pepper, salt, sugar, and bay leaf.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes, then remove the herbs and mash the peas.

  3. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the butter and a small amount of mace together, then add to the soup and simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the soup through a sieve, return to the stove, and add the whole peas, hot milk, and cream.

  3. 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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 and green flavour of the soup once mashed and strained.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder, mellow flavour.
Chicken stock
Supplies savoury depth and liquid to build the soup's body.

The step that matters

Strain the soup through a sieve. Straining removes fibres and skins from the mashed peas, giving a smooth texture. Adding the dairy after straining keeps it from curdling or separating during the long simmer.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, cream, pepper, parsley, sugar, chicken. 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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