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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, beef, bones, celery, onions, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Wash and place the split peas in a kettle.

  2. Add the beef, bones, salt, and enough water to cover everything.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Add the celery and onions.

  5. Cook for 20 minutes.

Slow cook and strain

  1. Transfer the kettle to the fireless cooker and cover quickly.

  2. After three hours, strain the soup into a saucepan.

Thicken and finish

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour for two minutes.

  2. Add the roux to the soup and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Stir in the parsley and celery.

  5. Serve with small croutons.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Form the bulk of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Beef
Adds savory meaty flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Carries flavor and helps form the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter to form a roux.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Adding the roux to the soup. Flour must be cooked in butter first so it loses its raw taste, and it should be stirred in well to avoid lumps while the soup is hot enough to thicken evenly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, onion, butter, flour, parsley. 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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