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Dry Peas-soup

A soup made from soaked dry peas, cooked with meat or bones, then seasoned with butter, flour, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Dry Peas-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Soak the peas overnight in water.

  2. In a pot, combine soaked peas with fresh roasted meat or bones.

  3. Cook until peas are soft, then drain through a colander.

  4. If peas sink, mix in a small bit of butter with flour or fried crumbs.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with fried bread or crumbs at the bottom.

  2. Season with sweet herbs and spices to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Dry peas
Form the body of the soup, thickening as their starch softens during cooking.
Meat or bones
Add savoury flavour and richness to the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the soup when the peas sink.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed with butter and added to the pot.

The step that matters

Cook until the peas are fully soft. Dried peas need enough time for their starch to gelatinise and their skins to soften. Undercooked peas stay grainy and do not thicken the soup properly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, 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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