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Pea Soup— Without Meat

A hearty split pea soup with potatoes, parsley, and a browned flour butter roux, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pea Soup— Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

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

Cook the soup

  1. Put the peas into a soup kettle with 3 quarts of cold water and cook slowly for 3 hours.

  2. Half an hour before the soup is done, peel and slice the potatoes and add them to the soup along with the parsley, salt, and pepper.

Make the browned butter thickener

  1. In a skillet, heat the butter and add the browned flour.

  2. Once hot, stir in ½ cup of hot water and let it boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir the mixture into the soup and boil for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Press the soup through a colander into a tureen.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Split peas
Break down during long cooking to give the soup its body and thickness.
Potatoes
Soften and release starch, adding further body and a creamy texture to the soup.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavour when cooked in butter.
Butter
Carries the browned flour and adds richness and flavour to the thickening mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the browned flour mixture to the soup. Flour thickens only when heated in fat and then boiled in liquid. Cooking the butter and flour until hot, then boiling with water, lets the starch swell evenly, so stirring it into the soup prevents lumps and gives a smooth, thick result.

Swap the peas

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

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

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