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EuMFORD Soup

A hearty soup of split peas, carrots, turnips, rice, and vegetables simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

EuMFORD Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine water, split peas, carrots, and turnips in a pot and let simmer overnight on low heat.

  2. Strain the mixture the next morning.

  3. Add rice, pepper, salt, celery, and any other vegetables.

  4. Simmer until all ingredients are tender.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens, adding body and a light thickness to the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color while softening into the broth.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and contribute mild sweetness and earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer overnight on low heat. Low, slow heat lets the split peas soften and break down fully without scorching on the bottom of the pot. Gentle simmering also extracts flavor from the vegetables gradually, producing a smoother, more developed broth.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, rice, pepper, celery. 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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