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Split Pea and Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas or beans, bacon, mutton, and vegetables, simmered for hours and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Split Pea and Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peas or beans overnight.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine water, soaked peas or beans, bacon, mutton, carrots, onions, celery, turnip, cloves, pepper, parsley, grated lemon peel, and basil.

  2. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer for 5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, discarding the meat and vegetables.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Split peas or beans
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor to the broth.
Mutton
Adds meaty richness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 5 hours. A rolling boil can break up the peas unevenly and cloud the broth, while a gentle simmer lets them soften fully and release their starch slowly, giving a smooth, thick body.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, clove, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, clove, 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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