Skip to main content
Main

Pea Soup

A soup made from split peas, water, bread, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pea Soup

Why it works: Bread and butter 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

Cook the peas

  1. Boil split peas in water until soft.

  2. Drain peas through a colander.

Add the bread and finish

  1. Toast the slice of bread and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Fry the bread pieces in a greased pan until brown.

  3. Add fried bread, butter, pepper, and salt to the soup.

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Provide the main body of the soup as their starches soften and thicken the liquid when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, carrying flavor through the soup.
Bread
Frying the pieces in fat browns them, adding toasted flavor and a crisp contrast to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil split peas in water until soft.. Peas must cook fully for their starches to break down. Undercooked peas stay firm and grainy, and they will not thicken the soup properly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lima beansfits about as well
  2. Peasthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, 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.

More split pea soup recipes

Baked 20Yellow 4 See all 228 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes