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Yellow Peas Soup

A hearty soup made from yellow peas, beef, pork, bacon, vegetables, and seasonings, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Yellow Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peas overnight in lukewarm water. If they are old, soak them again in the morning.

  2. In a large pot, combine the soaked peas, water, beef, pickled pork, bacon or mutton shank, carrots, turnips, and onions.

Make the soup

  1. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum. Stir the peas from the bottom.

  2. Add 1 quart of boiling water or the liquid from boiled meat.

  3. Simmer until the peas are soft enough to pulp, then strain through a coarse sieve.

  4. Remove the onions from the pulp and return the pulp to the soup.

  5. Add the celery or celery seed, salt, and pepper. Simmer for 45 minutes to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen, letting it stand covered for a few minutes before removing the fat from the top.

  2. Garnish with dried mint or parsley and 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow peas
Break down when simmered to thicken the soup into a pulp.
Lean beef or meat trimmings
Adds savory meat flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Pickled pork
Contributes salty, savory depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup base.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the soup base.

The step that matters

Simmering the peas until they pulp. Peas must be fully softened before straining, because only well-cooked peas break down into a smooth pulp that thickens the soup. Undercooked peas stay grainy and block the sieve.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper. 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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