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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, ham, vegetables, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a pot, fry the chopped ham and onion in bacon fat until slightly brown.

  2. Add the chopped turnip, carrot, and celery; simmer for 15 minutes.

Cook the soup

  1. Pour in the hot water and add the soaked split peas.

  2. Boil gently until the peas are tender, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  3. Stir in the brown sugar, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve, return to the pot, and simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a tureen with fried bread on the side.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 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. 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

Split peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and browning from frying to the base.
Bacon fat
Carries flavor into the onion and ham during the initial frying.
Onion
Softens and browns to build a sweet, aromatic foundation.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body as it cooks into the soup.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavor as it softens in the base.

The step that matters

Stirring while the peas boil. Split peas are dense and starchy and settle quickly, so they scorch on the bottom of the pot. Constant stirring during gentle boiling keeps them from sticking and burning, which would add a bitter, acrid taste to the whole soup.

Swap the peas

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

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

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