Skip to main content
Main

Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, onions, carrot, celery, and butter, served with dried mint and fried bread.

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

Make the soup

  1. Combine split peas, onions, carrot, celery, and water in a large pot.

  2. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours, occasionally adding water as needed.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve and return to the pot.

  4. Add butter, pepper, and salt, and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with dried powdered mint and diced 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.

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

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounder, richer mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma as they soften into the base.
Celery
Contributes savory flavor and aroma to the simmered base.

The step that matters

Simmer for 3 to 4 hours, occasionally adding water as needed. Split peas need long, steady simmering to fully soften and break down so the soup thickens smoothly. Letting the pot boil dry would scorch the bottom and leave the texture uneven, so water must be replenished.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, carrot, celery, butter, 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 split pea soup recipes

Baked 20Yellow 4 See all 228 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes