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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with dried peas, pork, onions, celery, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the peas and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Soak the peas in 3 quarts of cold water overnight.

Cook

  1. In the morning, drain the water and place the peas in a soup pot with 7 quarts of cold water, the pork, onions, celery, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil gently for 7 hours, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the pork and rub the soup through a sieve.

  2. Serve with toasted bread and the boiled pork.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Dried peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lean salt pork
Adds savory, salty flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Build a sweet, aromatic base as they soften in the simmering liquid.
Celery
Adds a fresh, vegetal aroma that rounds out the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring during the 7-hour boil. Peas are starchy and thicken as they cook, so they settle and scorch on the pot bottom. Frequent stirring keeps heat even and prevents burnt flavour.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pork, celery, clove, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pork, celery, clove, pepper. 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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