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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split or green peas, stock, butter, flour, and served with fried bread chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the split peas overnight.

  2. Boil the peas in just enough water to prevent scorching until tender.

  3. Pass the peas through a sieve and add them to the stock.

Season and simmer

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Bring the mixture to a slow boil and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, stir in the butter mixed with flour.

  2. Serve hot with chips of fried 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.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down into a thick body that gives the soup its texture.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred in with the butter.

The step that matters

Boil the peas in just enough water. Using too little water with peas can cause them to scorch on the bottom of the pan. Enough water keeps them cooking gently until fully tender, which is needed for a smooth purée after sieving.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, butter, flour, bread. 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.

More pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

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