Skip to main content
Main

Split Pea Soup

A creamy soup made from split peas, butter, flour, milk, and served with fried bread dice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash the split peas and soak them in cold water for 24 hours (or 1 night at lower altitudes).

  2. Drain and place the peas in fresh water, then boil until soft, adding water as needed.

  3. Once soft, mash the peas through a strainer.

Make the creamed mixture

  1. In a pan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Gradually add the milk until the mixture reaches a thick, creamy consistency.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the strained peas with the creamed mixture and cook together for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with fried bread dice.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 split peas
Form the body of the soup as they soften and break down into a thick purée.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and carries the flour for the creamed base.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, creamy base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild, rich flavour to the thickened base.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk to the butter and flour. Adding milk slowly while stirring lets the starch in the flour hydrate evenly, so the base thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

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

More split pea soup recipes

Baked 20Yellow 4 See all 228 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes