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Pea Soup Without Meat

A hearty split pea soup made with vegetables and optional bacon, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Pea Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine split peas, water, onions, celery, sweet herbs, carrots, dried mint, spinach, and bones or bacon.

  2. Boil the mixture until all vegetables are soft and tender, about 2 hours.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve, pressing the carrot pulp through.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the strained soup to the pot and boil for an additional hour with the best part of the celery and 1 teaspoon of pepper.

  2. Serve with fried bread and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Carrot + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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.
Bacon bones
Add savory, smoky flavor to the broth without making it a meat dish.
Onions
Provide sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body when pressed through the sieve.

The step that matters

Straining through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through the sieve pushes soft pulp into the liquid, which thickens the soup and gives it a smooth texture. Skipping the pressing leaves the soup thin and grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, celery, carrot, mint, spinach, pepper, bread):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, celery, carrot, mint, spinach, pepper, bread. 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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