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Peas Soup Withotit Meat

A hearty split pea soup simmered with onions, carrots, turnips, celery, and optional chili vinegar or mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Peas Soup Withotit Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Rinse the split peas and remove any worm-eaten ones.

  2. In a large pot, combine the peas and cold water, and boil until tender.

Fry the vegetables

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the onions, carrots, and turnips until browned.

Make and serve the soup

  1. Add the fried vegetables, black pepper, and salt to the pot, and stir well.

  2. Simmer gently, stirring often, until the vegetables are tender enough to pass through a sieve.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a clean pot and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the sliced celery and adjust seasoning if needed, then simmer for 20 minutes.

  5. Serve hot with fried or toasted bread on the side, and add chili vinegar or mushroom ketchup 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. 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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 main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the onions, carrots and turnips and helps them brown in the pan.
Onions
Browning in butter adds savoury sweetness and depth to the soup base.
Turnips
Add body and a mild sweetness once cooked and pressed through the sieve.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and colour, and body when passed through the sieve.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. The vegetables must be fully tender before sieving, or the purée stays grainy and thin. Pressing forces the softened solids into a smooth, thick texture.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, butter, pepper, celery, vinegar. 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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