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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, salt pork, onion, and flour, served over hot toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Onion and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put the soaked split peas in a pot with 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Add the finely chopped onion and salt pork.

  3. Boil for 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before serving, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 1 tablespoon of Shamrock butter until smooth, then add to the soup.

  2. Serve in a soup tureen over cubes of hot toast.

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. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Peas + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 long boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and salty flavor that seasons the whole pot of soup.
Flour
Mixed with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup at the end.
Shamrock butter
Fat that carries the flour smoothly into the soup and adds richness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. If the flour and fat are added directly to hot soup without being blended smooth, they clump into lumps. Mixing them into a smooth paste first lets the starch disperse evenly as it thickens the soup.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pork, flour, butter. 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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