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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, salt pork, butter, flour, celery, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Look over the peas, wash them, and soak in cold water overnight.

Cook the soup

  1. Drain the peas and boil them with the salt pork for six hours, simmering gently.

  2. Add salt and pepper about an hour before it's done.

  3. Strain the soup and return it to the kettle.

  4. Rub the butter and flour together.

  5. Stir the mixture into the soup and cook for a few minutes.

  6. If the soup is too thick, thin it with boiling water or hot milk.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Peas + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 long simmering to form the body and thickness of the soup.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid as it simmers with the peas.
Flour
Combined with butter and stirred in to thicken the soup.
Butter
Mixed with flour to form a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour mixture into the soup. Flour that is added directly to hot liquid clumps easily. Rubbing it with butter first coats the flour particles, which helps them disperse smoothly when stirred in.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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