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Split-pea Soup

A soup made from soaked split peas, butter, flour, salt, pepper, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Split-pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Put the soaked peas in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water and bring to a slow boil.

  2. Simmer until the peas dissolve, adding water as needed to maintain 2 quarts.

  3. Once soft, strain the mixture through a colander and return to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. If too thick, adjust consistency with milk or water, then bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the butter and flour until smooth, then stir into the soup and cook for a few moments.

  3. Season to taste and serve over diced fried bread in a tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dried split peas
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked briefly with butter, giving a smoother body.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour until smooth before stirring in. Lumps of flour will not dissolve evenly in hot liquid. Blending the flour with butter first into a smooth paste lets it disperse and thicken the soup without clumping.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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