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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Wash the peas well and soak them in cold water for 24 hours (or 12 hours at lower altitudes).

  2. Drain and put the peas in fresh water to boil, cooking until soft and adding water as needed.

  3. Once soft, mash the peas through a strainer.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour and seasonings, then gradually add the milk until you reach a thick creamy consistency.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the strained peas and creamed milk in a pot and cook together for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve with fried diced 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.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Split peas
Provide the main body and thick texture of the soup as they break down when cooked.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the creamy base as it melts with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the thickened sauce that is stirred into the peas.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Milk must be added gradually to the butter and flour so the starch can hydrate evenly; adding it all at once can leave lumps and an uneven, thin consistency.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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