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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, potatoes, onions, carrots, turnip, celery, butter, and seasonings, served hot with mint or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Pea Soup

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 ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Pick and wash the split peas, then set them to boil in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Add the potatoes and other prepared vegetables, butter, and seasoning.

  3. Cook until all ingredients are soft, then rub through a sieve back into the saucepan.

  4. If the soup is too thick, add more water and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with fresh chopped mint or fried wholemeal bread.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + turniptop 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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 cooking to thicken the soup and give it body.
Potatoes
Soften and add starch, helping the soup become smooth and thick when sieved.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Rubbing through the sieve. Split peas and potatoes must be fully soft before sieving, or the purée will be grainy and unevenly thick. Cooking until everything is soft lets the starch and pea fibres break down into a smooth texture.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, 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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Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

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