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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, ham, onion, butter, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, celery salt, and optional milk or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick over and wash the split peas.

  2. Soak overnight.

  3. Drain the peas and boil them in cold water with the ham and onion until soft.

Make the soup

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Return the mixture to the heat and add a thickening made of melted butter, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Add enough hot milk, cream, stock, or water to achieve a puree consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with croutons.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried split peas
Break down during boiling to form the thick, puree-like body of the soup.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style thickening that gives the soup body and a smooth, velvety texture.
Raw ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the cooking water as it simmers with the peas.
Milk, cream, stock, or water
Adjusts the final thickness, loosening the puree to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Add the thickening and boil for 5 minutes. Flour must be cooked in hot fat and liquid long enough to lose its raw starch taste and to thicken fully; stopping early leaves a pasty flavor and weak body.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, butter, flour, sugar, pepper, celery):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter, flour, sugar, pepper, 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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