Skip to main content
Main

Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, beef, potatoes, celery root, onion, parsley, and sausages, thickened with butter and flour.

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

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash the split peas in warm water by rubbing them through your hands or soak them in lukewarm water overnight.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the split peas and water, and boil for about 2 hours with the potatoes, celery root, parsley, and onion.

  2. When the soup has reduced to about half, remove the vegetables.

  3. Press the mixture through a colander.

  4. Add the beef to the soup and boil until tender.

  5. Remove the beef from the soup.

  6. Boil the little sausages in the strained soup.

Thicken and serve

  1. If the soup is too thin, melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour to the melted butter and let it boil.

  3. Stir in part of the soup briskly.

  4. Add it back to the whole mixture.

  5. Cut stale bread into dice and brown them in hot butter or fat without burning.

  6. Serve the soup with croutons and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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 boiling to give the soup its body and thick texture.
Potatoes
Break down into the soup and add starch that gives body to the purée.
Flour
Cooked in butter to form a roux that thickens the soup when stirred in.
Stale bread
Browned in butter to make crisp croutons that contrast with the smooth soup.
Beef
Simmered in the soup to add savoury, meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour mixture into the soup. If the roux is added without briskly stirring in part of the soup first, the flour can clump into lumps instead of thickening the soup evenly.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, parsley, onion, beef, butter, flour. 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 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipes