Why it works: Peas and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓
Pea Boup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peas
Soak the split peas in a large quantity of water overnight.
Drain the water and boil the peas in 1 gallon of fresh water.
Keep a kettle of boiling water on hand to add if the mixture becomes too thick.
Pour the peas into a colander.
Rub the peas through with a wooden spoon.
Wash the pot thoroughly to prevent burning.
Return the peas to the pot.
Cook the soup
Let the peas boil slowly over a gentle fire until thickened.
Boil the salt pork for 1 hour in a separate pot.
Add the boiled salt pork to the peas.
Boil the mixture for another hour.
Serve
Cut the toasted bread into small pieces.
Serve the soup in a tureen with the pork on a dish.
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.
-
Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together804 recipes
Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).
-
Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,371 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
-
Peas + porktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,589 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 into a thick, smooth soup body when boiled and rubbed through.
- Salt pork
- Adds savory fat and seasoning to the soup as it simmers with the peas.
The step that matters
Rubbing the peas through. Pushing the softened peas through a sieve or colander breaks them into a smooth purée that gives the soup its body. Cooking them until fully soft first makes this much easier.
Swap the peas
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, bread):
- Lima beansfits about as well
- Peanutfits about as well
- Beansfits about as well
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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