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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, corned beef or pork, carrots, turnip, onion, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pea Soup

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 ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the split peas overnight.

Cook and serve

  1. In the morning, boil the peas with the meat for 3 hours.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and boil for 1 more hour.

  3. Strain the soup and season to taste.

  4. Pour the soup over 2 thin slices of toast cut into dice, placed in the bottom of the tureen.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + turniptop 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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Corned beef or pork
Adds savoury, meaty flavour and richness to the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Adds aroma and a mild sweetness as it softens in the soup.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and colour, and softens to blend into the soup.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body as it softens during the final simmer.

The step that matters

Add the chopped vegetables and boil for 1 more hour.. The peas need the long simmer to break down and thicken the soup. The vegetables soften in the final hour, so they should be cut evenly to cook through at the same rate.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, 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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Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

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