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Pease Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, broth, vegetables, and herbs, served hot with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pease Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, bring the meat broth to a boil.

  2. Add the split peas (or whole peas) and boil for 2 to 3 hours, or add pea flour mixed with cold broth and boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Add the chopped celery, onion, carrot, and turnip to the boiling broth and cook for about 1 hour.

  4. Add the chopped parsley and mint and cook for an additional 20 minutes.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with bread.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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 long boiling to thicken the broth into a soup body.
Meat broth
Provides the liquid base and savory flavor for the whole soup.
Celery, onion, carrot, and turnip
Add aromatic sweetness and body as they soften in the simmering broth.
Fresh parsley and mint
Add bright, fresh aroma at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the peas to the broth. Split peas need a long, steady boil to soften fully and release starch, which thickens the soup. If they are undercooked, the soup stays thin and grainy.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, peas, celery, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, peas, celery, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley. 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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