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Drizp Pea Soup

A hearty pea soup made with dried peas, bacon or salt pork, and served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Drizp Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and cook the peas

  1. Soak the dried peas overnight in 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Combine the soaked peas with 1 gallon of cold water and the bacon or salt pork in a large pot.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil. Skim the surface.

  4. Cover and let simmer for 3 to 4 hours until the peas are very tender.

  5. Strain the peas.

Finish the soup

  1. Mash the strained peas through a sieve back into the soup.

  2. Return the soup to the heat.

  3. Add sugar and stock to the soup.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil.

  5. Mix the flour into the butter. Add the flour-butter mixture to the boiling soup.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Serve with diced toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter 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

Dried peas
Break down into thick body and sweet, earthy flavour as they simmer and mash.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds savoury, smoky fat and salt flavour to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the hot liquid with the butter.
Butter
Carries the flour smoothly into the soup and adds richness.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury bacon and peas.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-butter mixture to the boiling soup. If the flour is dropped in as lumps or the soup is not kept moving, the starch clumps instead of dispersing and thickening evenly. Mixing the flour into the butter first coats the grains so they blend smoothly into the hot liquid.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, flour, butter, pepper, 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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