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Split-pea or Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas or beans, simmered with optional ham bone and onion, finished with butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Split-pea or Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the split peas or dried beans overnight in 3 quarts of cold water.

  2. Drain the water and place the soaked peas or beans in a saucepan with 2 quarts of water and the ham bone, if using.

  3. Optionally, boil an onion with the peas or beans for added flavor.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer for 4 to 5 hours, adding more water if necessary, until the peas or beans are soft.

  2. Press the mixture through a sieve, adding enough stock or water to achieve a creamy consistency.

  3. Return the soup to the saucepan, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the butter and flour mixed until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup with croutons on top.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 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 or dried beans
Break down during long simmering to give the soup its body and thickness.
Butter or drippings
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when mixed with butter and stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Flour mixed with fat must be blended smooth before adding it to hot soup, otherwise it clumps instead of thickening evenly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, flour, butter, pepper, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, flour, butter, pepper, ham. 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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