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Plain Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with pork, split peas, water, sugar, pepper, and optional vegetables and biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and biscuit work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 841 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Plain Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the pork and water.

  2. Add the split peas, sugar, and pepper.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours, then add the vegetables.

  4. Continue boiling for another 30 minutes or until the peas are tender.

Serve

  1. Optionally, add broken biscuit 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. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Peas + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Pork
Releases savory flavor and fat into the water, enriching the broth.
Split peas
Break down during long boiling, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the earthy flavor of the peas.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sugar, pepper, biscuit):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, pepper, biscuit. 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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