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Winter Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, bacon, veal or beef, onions, herbs, and water, simmered until pureed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Winter Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the split peas and place them in a stewpan.

  2. Add the bacon, sliced onions, veal or beef, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, water, salt, and sugar.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the peas are pureed and the water has reduced by half.

  2. Remove the meat and keep it warm on a dish.

Strain and serve

  1. Rub the soup through a fine sieve into another stewpan.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil again and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Peas + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Streaked bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour that carries through the soup.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Veal or beef
Adds meaty flavour and richness to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering until the peas are pureed and the water has reduced by half. Peas must cook long enough to break down fully, otherwise the sieved soup stays grainy and thin. Reducing the liquid concentrates the flavour, so the seasoning should be adjusted only near the end.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, veal, parsley, thyme, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, parsley, thyme, sugar. 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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