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Pea Soup and Pickled Pork

A hearty pea soup served with pickled pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pea Soup and Pickled Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stew pan, combine split peas, sliced onions, sliced celery, mint, butter, water, and pickled pork.

  2. Bring to a boil over low heat until the peas are soft enough to pass through a fine sieve.

  3. Remove the pork and cover it until needed.

  4. Rub the soup through the sieve and return it to the stew pan to keep warm.

Serve

  1. Serve the pork in a tureen and pour the soup over it.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Celery + minttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Peas + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down when simmered to thicken the soup into a smooth purée.
Pickled pork
Flavours the broth with salt and savoury richness as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the soup base.
Celery
Contributes a vegetal, aromatic background flavour to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder mouthfeel and richer flavour.

The step that matters

Rubbing the soup through the sieve. The peas must be fully soft before sieving; under-cooked peas will not pass through and leave a grainy, thin texture. Pressing the cooked peas through a fine sieve breaks them into a smooth purée that gives the soup its body.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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