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Puree of Split Peas

A puree of split peas cooked with vegetables, salt pork, and seasonings, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Puree of Split Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and soak the split peas overnight.

Cook the soup

  1. In the morning, cook the peas in cold water with the carrot, onion, parsley, bay leaf, cloves, and salt pork.

  2. Cook slowly until the peas are tender.

  3. Remove the vegetables and pass the peas and liquid through a sieve.

  4. Return the soup to the heat, bring to a boil, and skim off any foam.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper, and serve 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Green split peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the peas are tender. Gentle simmering lets the peas soften fully and break down into a smooth, thick soup. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom of the pot and leave the peas unevenly cooked.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, parsley, clove, pork, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, parsley, clove, pork, 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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