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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked split peas, pork fat, onion, butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the split peas and soak them for several hours, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, add the soaked peas, cold water, fat salt pork, and chopped onion.

  2. Simmer for three to four hours, or until the peas are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a smooth soup.

Finish

  1. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together, then add to the soup.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and dilute with milk, adding more if necessary.

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

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

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Split peas
Provide the bulk and body of the soup as they soften and break down during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour in the finished soup.
Flour
Cooked with butter into a roux, it thickens the soup and gives it a smooth body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the soup's flavour when stirred in at the end.
Fat salt pork
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the water as it simmers with the peas.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour together. Cooking flour in fat before adding it cooks out the raw starch taste and helps it blend without lumps. Adding it raw or too quickly can leave lumps or a pasty flavour.

Swap the peas

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

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

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