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Split Pea Soup, Without Meat

A hearty split pea soup made with vegetables, herbs, butter, and tomato juice, served over fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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, Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the split peas overnight.

  2. In the morning, combine the soaked peas, chopped vegetables, herbs, and tomato juice in a pot.

Cook

  1. Cover with water and cook slowly for three hours, or until the peas can be mashed through a colander.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then simmer for fifteen minutes.

  3. Stir in the butter and cook for five minutes longer.

Serve

  1. Serve over fried bread in a tureen.

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 + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Form the bulk of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body when stirred in at the end.
Tomato juice
Adds acidity and savory depth to balance the sweet vegetables.
Onions
Provide sweetness and aromatic flavor as they soften in the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the peas until they can be mashed through a colander. Split peas must cook long enough to soften fully and break down; undercooked peas stay grainy and do not thicken the soup properly. Slow cooking also keeps the pot from scorching on the bottom.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, tomato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, tomato. 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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