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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, water, onion, optional milk, flour, butter, or fat salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the split peas for about 1 hour, then drain them.

  2. Add the peas to a pot with 1 quart of cold water and the onion slices.

  3. Simmer until the peas are soft, about 2 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the mixture through a strainer and reheat.

  2. Thin the soup with milk to your desired consistency.

  3. Thicken with flour as you would for potato soup.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter for flavor, or simmer a piece of fat salt pork with the peas.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 give the soup its body and thick texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavor when used to thin it.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling with heat to increase its viscosity.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmer until the peas are soft. Split peas must cook long enough for their starches to fully soften; undercooked peas leave the soup grainy and thin. Straining after cooking only smooths what the peas have already broken down into.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, flour, butter, pork. 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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