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Soup

English Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, marrow bone, water, pepper, salt, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,331 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

English Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Place the marrow bone and split peas in a soup pot.

  2. Cover with 3 quarts of water and simmer slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve, mashing and pressing the peas back into the soup. Stir well to combine.

Serve

  1. Place cube-shaped pieces of buttered toast in the bottom of a tureen.

  2. Pour the hot soup over the toast and serve.

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 + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 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

Split peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Marrow bone
Slowly releases fat and flavor into the water, giving the soup richness.
Buttered toast
Soaks up the hot broth at the bottom of the tureen, adding softness and fat.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 3 hours. A gentle simmer lets the peas soften fully and the bone release its flavor without the liquid reducing too fast or the peas scorching on the bottom of the pot. Too vigorous a boil can break the soup unevenly.

“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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