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Smoked Pea Soup

A soup made with smoked peas, ham or bacon, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Smoked Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the peas.

  2. Add the peas, water, and ham or bacon to a pot.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the butter.

  2. Thicken the soup with flour, stirring well.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Serve immediately with croutons.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Peas + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together402 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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
Form the body of the soup and give it its main flavor and thickness.
Ham or bacon
Adds smoky, savory flavor to the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred into the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour, stirring well. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Stirring it in thoroughly while the soup is hot lets the starch dissolve and swell evenly, giving a smooth, uniformly thick texture instead of lumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, flour, pepper. 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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