Skip to main content
Main

To Make a Common Peas Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, water, bacon or beef bones, celery, turnip, flour, spices, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Make a Common Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine split peas and soft water in a large pot.

  2. Add lean bacon or roast beef bones, chopped celery, and turnip.

  3. Boil until reduced to 2 quarts.

  4. Strain the mixture through a colander using a wooden spoon.

  5. Mix a little flour with water.

  6. Add the flour mixture to the soup and boil well.

  7. Slice another head of celery.

  8. Season the soup with Cayenne pepper, dried mint, and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Cut the bread into small dice.

  2. Fry the diced bread until light brown and place in a dish.

  3. Pour the soup over the fried 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Flour
Mixed with water and boiled in, it thickens the soup further.
Bread
Fried until light brown, it adds crisp texture to the served soup.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to 2 quarts. Reducing the soup concentrates its flavor and sets its thickness. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while over-reducing makes it too thick and salty.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beef, celery, turnip, flour, pepper, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beef, celery, turnip, flour, pepper, 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.

More pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes