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A Peas Soup for Winter

A hearty winter soup made with split peas, beef, bacon, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

A Peas Soup for Winter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine beef, bacon, and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam that rises to the surface.

  4. Add onions, turnips, carrot, celery, allspice, and split peas.

  5. Simmer gently for 3 hours.

  6. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  7. Press the peas through the sieve to extract flavor.

  8. Return the strained soup to a clean pot.

  9. Stir in dried mint.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate pot, combine diced celery and turnips with 1 quart of water.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the boiled vegetables.

  4. Add the boiled vegetables and fried bacon to the soup.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  6. Boil the soup for an additional 15 minutes.

  7. Serve the soup in a tureen with crispy fried bread on top.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Releases flavor and body into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Split peas
Break down during long simmering and press through to thicken the soup.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat that enriches the broth and flavors the final soup.
Onions
Build sweetness and aromatic depth in the stock as they cook.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavor to the stock and the diced garnish vegetables.

The step that matters

Pressing the peas through the sieve. Split peas hold their starch in the cooked pulp; pressing them through breaks it down and releases it, which thickens the soup. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup thin and grainy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, allspice. 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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