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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bone, ham, split peas, vegetables, and seasonings, served with toasted bread.

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 ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Place the beef bone and ham in a soup pot and pour in the cold water.

  2. Add the split peas or beans, carrots, turnips, celery, thyme, and peppers.

  3. Boil for two hours or until the vegetables are soft.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  2. Stir in the butter and salt, then boil for an additional five minutes.

  3. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Split peas or small white beans
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Beef bone
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water, giving the broth richness.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color while softening into the soup.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soften to add body to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounder, smoother mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil for two hours or until the vegetables are soft. Split peas need a long, steady simmer to fully break down; stopping early leaves them firm and grainy, and the soup thin and uneven.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, thyme, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, thyme, pepper. 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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