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Dried Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from dried split peas, ham bone, onion, garlic, butter, and seasonings, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Dried Pea Soup

Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Dried Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick over the peas and soak them in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain and rinse the peas again.

Cook the soup

  1. Place the peas, ham bone, and water in a soup kettle and boil slowly for 4 hours or more.

  2. Strain the soup.

Make the thickening and finish

  1. Heat the butter in a pan, add the chopped onion and minced garlic, and brown them.

  2. Add the flour to the onion and garlic mixture and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Gradually add 1 cup of the strained stock to the mixture.

  4. Add this thickening back to the soup along with the marjoram.

  5. Let the soup boil again and strain through a sieve.

  6. Serve with croutons.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Peas + garlictop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried split peas
Provide the bulk and body of the soup as they break down during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked in butter and blended in, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries the onion and garlic flavor when browned.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savory depth to the base.

The step that matters

Adding the flour thickening to the soup. Flour clumps if added raw or dumped in at once. Cooking it briefly in fat and adding hot stock gradually lets it dissolve smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, ham, clove, garlic, onion, butter, sugar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, ham, clove, garlic, onion, butter, sugar. 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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