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French Vegetable Soup

A creamy split pea soup with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, potatoes, cloves, and white peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

French Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and potatoes.

  2. In a large pot, combine the chopped vegetables, split peas, water or broth, cloves, and white peppercorns.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil until the mixture is smooth.

  2. Pass the soup through a sieve.

Serve

  1. When serving, stir in the cream and milk.

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. Carrot + turniptop 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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 boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Potatoes
Break down while cooking and add starch that helps thicken the soup.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished soup a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is smooth. The soup must cook long enough for the peas and vegetables to soften fully; undercooked split peas stay grainy and will not blend or strain to a smooth texture.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, celery, potato, clove, cream. 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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