Skip to main content
Main

Baked Soup

A hearty oven-baked soup with meat, onions, carrots, rice, split peas, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In an earthen jug or pan, combine the meat, onions, carrots, rice, split peas, pepper, and salt.

  3. Pour in the gallon of water and cover tightly.

  4. Add any available vegetables, such as turnips, leeks, or potatoes, cut small before adding them to the pot.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven alongside bread until cooked through.

  2. Use leftover meat and bones from previous meals to enhance flavor.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 baking to thicken the soup and give it body.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens, adding body and thickening the broth.
Meat
Releases flavor and savory richness into the broth as it cooks.
Onions
Build aromatic sweetness and depth as they soften in the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and soft texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cover the pot tightly before baking. A tight cover traps steam so the liquid stays in the pot and the long, gentle heat cooks the peas and rice through instead of evaporating away.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, carrot, rice, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, carrot, rice, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes