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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, vegetables, herbs, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine split peas, spring water, onions, celery, sweet herbs, carrots, dried mint, spinach, and bacon in a large pot.

  2. Boil until vegetables are soft and tender.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve, pressing the carrot pulp through the sieve.

  4. Return the strained soup to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil for 1 hour with the best part of the celery and 1 teaspoon of pepper.

  2. Add a little dried mint and fried bread before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Carrot + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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 boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onions
Build the flavour base and add sweetness as they soften in the broth.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat that enriches the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body when their pulp is pressed through the sieve.

The step that matters

Straining the soup through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables and peas through the sieve breaks them into fine particles that thicken the soup and give a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup thin and grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, celery, carrot, mint, spinach, pepper):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, celery, carrot, mint, spinach, 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.

More pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

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