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Dried Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from dried peas, salt pork, onions, and seasonings, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Dried Pea Soup

Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dried Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the dried peas well and soak them in water overnight.

Cook the soup

  1. In the morning, place the soaked peas in a soup kettle with 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Boil for 3 hours, then add the salt pork, salt, pepper, and chopped onions.

  3. After some time, remove the pork, mash the peas, and strain the mixture through a sieve into a kettle.

  4. Return the pork to the kettle, skim off the fat, and let it boil for 1 hour.

  5. Serve hot with toast.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Peas + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 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

Dried peas
Form the body of the soup, thickening into a creamy texture as they break down.
Salt pork
Adds savory, fatty flavor that carries through the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the soup.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat. Fat rises to the surface as the pork and peas cook. Skimming it before the final boil keeps the soup from tasting greasy and gives it a cleaner texture.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, onion. 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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