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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, bones, vegetables, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and dried mint.

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

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

Prepare

  1. Wash the peas and soak them in 2 quarts of water overnight.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the soaked peas, water, bones, salt, and dripping; bring to a gentle boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Prepare the vegetables by cutting them into small squares; add them to the boiling soup and simmer gently for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. Remove the bones and strain the soup through a colander or sieve.

  4. Return the soup to the saucepan, season to taste, and bring it to a boil before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with dried mint and diced toast.

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

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

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Dripping
Adds fat for richness and a savoury flavour carried through the soup.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften into the soup base.
Bones
Release flavour and gelatin into the water during simmering, adding depth.

The step that matters

Simmering the soup for about 2 hours. Gentle simmering lets the peas fully soften and break down so the soup thickens smoothly. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom and make the texture uneven.

Swap the mint

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

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

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