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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, water, salt, butter, onion, carrots, turnips, pepper, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash and soak the split peas overnight.

  2. Cook the peas in cold water with salt for 3 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter and brown the onion, carrots, and turnips.

  2. Add the browned vegetables to the soup and boil for 1 hour.

  3. Rub the soup through a sieve.

  4. Mix the pepper and flour with a little milk, then add to the soup. Boil for 2 minutes.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green split peas
Break down during long cooking to give the soup its body and thickness.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when mixed with milk and boiled.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onion, carrots and turnips, adding rich flavour.
Onion
Browns in butter to add sweet, savoury depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the soup through a sieve. Cooked split peas are soft but can keep fibrous skins and lumps. Pressing the soup through a sieve removes these and gives a smooth, even texture, so it should be done while the soup is hot and fully cooked.

Swap the peas

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

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

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