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Split-pea or Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas or beans, simmered with optional ham bone, onion, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Split-pea or Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soak

  1. Soak the split peas or beans overnight in 3 quarts of cold water.

Cook and sieve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the soaked peas or beans with 2 quarts of water and a ham bone, if using.

  2. Simmer for 4 to 5 hours, or until the peas or beans are soft, adding more water as needed.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add enough stock, milk, or water to achieve a creamy consistency.

  2. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add a roux made from 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon flour cooked together.

  5. Dilute the roux with a little soup before adding it to the pot.

  6. Optionally, boil an onion with the peas or beans for added flavor.

  7. Serve with croutons on top or on the side.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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
Break down during simmering to form the thick, earthy body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked in butter as a roux and stirred into the soup.
Butter
Cooks with the flour to form the roux and adds richness to the thickened soup.

The step that matters

Dilute the roux with a little soup before adding it to the pot.. Flour starch clumps when it hits hot liquid unmixed. Thinning the roux first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, sugar, butter, flour, pepper, ham, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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