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Winter Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, meat broth, vegetables, and toasted bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Winter Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the split peas, discarding any that float.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the peas, broth or water, butter, meat scraps, turnip, carrot, onion, thyme, and celery.

  2. Boil slowly, stirring frequently to prevent burning, until the peas dissolve.

  3. Rub the soup through a sieve and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Boil again for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with toasted bread cubes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 into a smooth body.
Meat broth or water
Provides the liquid that carries the peas and vegetables as they soften.
Meat scraps and bones
Release savory flavour and body into the broth during slow simmering.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the soup a richer mouthfeel.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil slowly and stir frequently. Peas are starchy and settle on the bottom of the pan, where they scorch easily at high heat. Gentle simmering with regular stirring keeps the soup from burning and lets the peas break down evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, turnip, carrot, onion, thyme, celery):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, turnip, carrot, onion, thyme, celery. 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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