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Pea Soup with Crusts

A soup made from dried yellow split peas, simmered with butter and flour, served with fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 with Crusts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Pick over and wash the peas in cold water.

  2. Combine peas and 2 quarts of cold water in a pot and heat slowly.

  3. As it heats, add ½ cup of cold water at a time until you have added 2 more quarts.

  4. Boil slowly without salt for 1.5 to 2 hours until soft enough to pass through a sieve.

  5. Rub the peas through a sieve and return to the pot.

  6. Mix in 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour until dissolved.

  7. Season with salt and pepper, then boil for 2-3 minutes.

Make the crusts

  1. Cut stale bread into ½ inch dice.

  2. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a frying pan until browned, then add the bread dice and fry until golden.

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

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

Yellow split peas
Break down into a thick purée that gives the soup its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the soup and browns the crusts.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly so it feels smooth and less watery.
Stale bread
Dried-out bread fries crisply, giving a crunchy contrast to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the peas until fully soft. Split peas must cook long enough for the starch to break down fully; undercooked peas stay grainy and will not pass through a sieve to make a smooth soup.

Swap the peas

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

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

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

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