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Pea Soup, with Meat Stock

A hearty soup made from split peas, meat stock, vegetables, and spices, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pea Soup, with Meat Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the split peas overnight.

  2. Wash the peas and add them to a pot with the meat stock.

  3. Chop the onion, turnip, carrots, and celery, and add them to the pot.

Cook the soup

  1. Season with pepper and cloves.

  2. Stir frequently to prevent burning.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a fine strainer.

  2. Serve with small pieces of toasted bread in a separate dish.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down as they cook, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Meat stock
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and help round out the soup's flavor.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice note to the soup.

The step that matters

Stir frequently to prevent burning. Split peas thicken as they cook and settle toward the bottom of the pot, where they can scorch. Regular stirring keeps the solids suspended and the heat even.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, pepper, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, pepper, clove. 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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