Skip to main content
Main

Sago Pea Soup

A split pea soup thickened with sago, flavored with onion, salt, and enriched with cream or milk and egg yolk.

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

Why it works: Peas and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,460 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sago Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash, soak, and cook the split peas in plenty of water until tender.

  2. Rub the peas through a colander and return to the pot.

  3. Add enough hot water to make 3 pints in total.

  4. Add onion slices.

Finish the soup

  1. Wash the sago in warm water.

  2. Stir the sago gradually into the soup.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes or until well dissolved.

  4. Remove the onion.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt.

  6. Combine the cream or milk with the beaten egg yolk.

  7. Stir the mixture into the soup a few minutes before serving.

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

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

  2. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Peas + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Peas + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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
Cooked and puréed, they give the soup its body and thick texture.
Sago
Starch that thickens the soup as it simmers and dissolves.
Egg yolk
Enriches the soup and adds richness when stirred in at the end.
Cream or milk
Adds fat and creaminess, softening the flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk mixture in at the end. Adding the egg and cream to a boiling soup can scramble the egg yolk and curdle the dairy. Stirring it in a few minutes before serving, off the boil, keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, cream, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, cream, egg. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes