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Pea Sotjp

A hearty soup made from dried peas, water, onions, celery, carrot, turnips, pepper, salt, butter, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 Sotjp

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put the dried peas into the water and boil for 4 hours.

  2. Add the chopped onions, celery, carrot, and turnips.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

  4. Boil for 2 hours longer, adding more water if the soup becomes too thick.

  5. Strain the soup through a colander and stir in the cold butter.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with small pieces of toasted bread placed in the bottom of the tureen.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried peas
Break down during long boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Stirred in cold at the end to add richness and a silkier mouthfeel.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory flavor as they soften in the simmering broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory depth to the soup base as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding more water during the second boil. Peas keep absorbing liquid and thickening as they cook, so the soup can turn too thick and scorch. Adding water as needed keeps the texture smooth and the soup from sticking to the pot.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, carrot, turnip, pepper, butter, bread. 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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