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Split Pea Soup

A soup made from split peas, onion, celery, parsley, butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick over and wash the split peas.

  2. Soak the peas in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, add the soaked peas, onion, celery, and parsley, then simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Mash the mixture through a fine strainer and return it to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. In a separate pan, cook the flour and butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the strained soup to the flour mixture, then stir in milk and season 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Split peas
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Provides fat and flavor, and forms the base of the roux with flour.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup smoothly.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavor when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter until smooth. Cooking flour in fat until smooth creates a roux. If the flour is added to hot liquid without this step, or stirred poorly, it forms lumps instead of thickening the soup evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, sugar, butter, flour, milk, celery, parsley):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, sugar, butter, flour, milk, celery, parsley. 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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