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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, tomatoes, onion, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the split peas overnight in cold water to cover.

  2. Drain the peas and add 2 quarts of cold water, tomatoes, onion, sugar, and baking soda.

  3. Simmer for 3 hours.

  4. Rub the soup through a sieve.

Thicken and season

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the flour to the melted butter.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling soup.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Peas + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Split peas
Form the body of the soup as they break down during long simmering.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form a roux for thickening.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks into the liquid, giving it body.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the water, helping the peas soften and break down.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Blending it with melted butter first and stirring it into boiling soup helps it disperse and thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

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