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Split Pea Soup

A soup made from soaked split peas simmered with water, butter, flour, sugar, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick over and wash the peas, then soak them overnight or for several hours in cold water.

Cook the soup

  1. Put the soaked peas in a pot with 3 pints of fresh cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Let the peas simmer until soft, adding more water as needed to maintain 3 pints of liquid.

  3. Once soft, strain the peas and return the liquid to the pot.

  4. Add water, stock, milk, or cream to achieve a puree-like consistency.

  5. Cook the butter and flour together in a separate pan.

  6. Add the butter and flour mixture to the strained soup while boiling.

  7. Stir in the salt and white pepper.

  8. Let it simmer for 10 minutes before serving.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Dried peas
Form the body of the soup and thicken it into a puree as they break down.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour mixture to the strained soup while boiling. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid and stirred, so adding the roux to a boiling soup and stirring well helps it blend smoothly without lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, flour, sugar. 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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