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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, vegetables, and a butter‑flour roux, finished with mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the split peas overnight in cold water.

  2. Discard any peas that float.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the peas with the onion, carrot, turnip, celery, and a piece of mint until the peas are tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the butter and flour together, then gradually add the soup to this mixture.

  2. Heat the soup and serve with powdered mint sprinkled on top.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they cook down and break apart.
Flour
Thickens the soup with the butter, giving it a smoother, more body-filled texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour together, then gradually add the soup. Adding the soup slowly to the butter and flour mixture helps it blend smoothly without lumps, because the starch needs to be evenly dispersed before it thickens.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, butter. 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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