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Made Without Meat

A hearty split pea soup made with butter, onions, and cold water, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,460 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Made Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat.

  2. Slice the onions and add them to the pot; fry until browned, stirring constantly.

  3. Add the cold water and washed split peas; bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 4 hours.

  5. Use a potato masher to stir before serving.

  6. Strain the soup through a colander into a tureen.

Serve

  1. Serve with tomato ketchup on the side if desired.

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.

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. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  4. Onion + coffeetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together232 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coffeetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth as the soup flavor base.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion flavor and helps them brown evenly.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until browned. Stirring constantly keeps the onions from scorching, while true browning develops sweet, deep flavor that the long simmer cannot add later.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, coffee. 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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