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Pease Soup

Pease soup is a split pea soup with onion, turnip, carrot, dripping, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pease Soup

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 ↓

Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the split peas overnight and soak them in 3 pints of cold water.

  2. Wash, peel, and slice the onion, turnip, and carrot.

Cook and serve

  1. In a pot, boil the vegetables with the dripping, soaked peas, water, and a little salt for 3 hours.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve, add pepper, warm it up, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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 boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens into the broth.
Turnip
Softens during boiling and adds earthy sweetness to the soup.
Carrot
Softens during boiling and adds gentle sweetness and colour to the soup.
Dripping
Adds fat, which carries flavour and gives the soup a rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boiling for 3 hours. Split peas must cook long enough to fully soften and break down, since that breakdown is what thickens the soup. Too short a boil leaves grainy peas and a thin texture. Keep the liquid simmering so it does not scorch on the base of the pot.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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