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Ionia Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from dried peas, water, onions, celery, carrot, turnips, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Ionia Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Add dried peas and water to a large pot.

  2. Boil for 4 hours.

Make the soup

  1. Chop onions, celery, carrot, and turnips.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables to the pot.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Boil for an additional 2 hours, adding more water if needed.

  5. Strain the soup.

  6. Stir in the butter.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with diced toast.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried peas
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long boiling.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and savory depth to the soup base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Boil for an additional 2 hours, adding more water if needed. Peas need prolonged simmering to fully soften and break down into a thick soup. If the liquid drops too low, the soup can scorch on the bottom of the pot and the texture becomes uneven.

Swap the peas

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

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

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