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Split Pea Soup

A simple soup made from split peas, water, salt, optional butter, onion or celery, browned flour, served with crackers or croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil 1 cup split peas in 3 pints water until dissolved.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  3. Add coarse sea salt and 2 teaspoons butter if desired.

  4. Add 1-2 slices onion or celery for flavor and reheat until boiling.

  5. Stir in 2 teaspoons browned flour mixed with a little cold water.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove onion or celery before serving.

  2. Serve with 2-3 crisp crackers or croutons.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 boiling to thicken the water into a soup body.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred in, adding body and a toasted note.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the browned flour. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump. Mixing it first with a little cold water makes a smooth slurry that thickens evenly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

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