Skip to main content
Main

Peas Soup

A hearty soup made with dried peas, beef, bacon, mint, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peas overnight.

  2. In the morning, cut the beef and bacon or pork into pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a large soup pot, combine the drained peas, beef, bacon or pork, and dried mint.

  2. Add 6 quarts of water and boil gently for 3 hours, skimming regularly.

  3. Add the celery or celery seed and continue boiling until the peas are dissolved and the celery is soft.

Serve

  1. Strain the soup into a tureen and serve with toasted bread.

  2. Stir the soup before serving to ensure even consistency.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Mint + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together334 recipes

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

  4. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  5. Peas + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Beef
Releases flavour and richness into the broth during long, gentle boiling.
Bacon or pickled pork
Adds smoky, salty fat that deepens the flavour of the broth.
Celery
Contributes aroma and a savoury, vegetal flavour as it softens in the broth.

The step that matters

Boil gently and skim regularly. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the broth clear, while skimming removes foam and scum that would otherwise cloud the soup and taste bitter.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beef, pork, celery, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beef, pork, celery, bread. 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 pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes