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Pea-soup

A hearty split pea soup with carrots, turnips, celery, potatoes, onion, and seasonings, served without meat.

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 ↓

Pea-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil split peas in water for 4-5 hours until tender.

  2. Add chopped carrots, turnips, celery, and potatoes; boil until they can be pulped through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Slice and fry the onion in flour and butter with pepper and salt.

  2. Combine the fried onion mixture with the pea mixture, adding soy sauce and ketchup 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. 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, 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 soup and give it body.
Potatoes
Starch that breaks down when boiled, helping the pulped soup thicken smoothly.
Onion
Fried in flour and butter, it adds savoury depth and aroma to the soup.
Flour
Browned with the onion in butter, it helps thicken the fried onion mixture.

The step that matters

Pulping the vegetables through a sieve. Vegetables must be boiled until fully soft, or they will not pass through the sieve. Undercooked pieces leave a grainy texture and uneven body in the finished soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, potato, onion, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, potato, onion, flour, butter. 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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