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Nourishing Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, bacon, optional mutton, and vegetables, seasoned with mint, pepper, and sea salt.

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

Nourishing Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the split peas in water overnight.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the soaked peas and 3 quarts of water, and simmer gently.

  3. Trim the meat from bones and fat, and cut into very small pieces.

  4. Clean and chop the vegetables, then add them to the soup.

Make the soup

  1. Remove any scum that rises to the top, then add the meat once the soup starts to simmer.

  2. Cut the bacon into shreds and add it to the soup.

  3. Simmer the mixture for 2.5 hours.

  4. Add the dried mint before or after straining the soup.

Strain and season

  1. Remove the meat and strain the soup through a sieve or colander.

  2. Return the strained soup to the saucepan, season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and add more water if too thick.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Onion + turniptop 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. Onion + carrottop 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

Split peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Scrag of mutton
Adds meat flavour and richness to the broth as it simmers.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the soup as it cooks.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and aroma as its flavour mellows in the broth.
Turnip
Contributes sweetness and body as it softens into the soup.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour as it softens during simmering.

The step that matters

Removing the scum. Foam that rises as the soup first heats contains impurities and proteins that can cloud the broth and taste bitter. Skimming it while the soup just starts to simmer keeps the final soup clean-flavoured.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, mutton, onion, turnip, carrot, 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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