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Old Peas Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, bones, celery, onions, and optional spinach or peas, simmered until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Old Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put the split peas in 4 quarts of water with the bones, celery, and onions.

  2. Boil until the peas are soft enough to pulp through a sieve.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the pot.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, and boil for nearly an hour.

Finish

  1. Add spinach or young green peas for improvement, if desired.

  2. Optionally, add celery seed or essence of celery if fresh celery is unavailable.

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

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

  2. Celery + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down when boiled to thicken the soup and give it a pulpy body.
Bones
Release flavour and gelatine into the water, adding savour and body to the broth.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth as they soften in the simmering liquid.
Celery
Contributes a fresh, savoury aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil until the peas are soft enough to pulp through a sieve. Split peas must be fully cooked to break down easily. Undercooked peas stay grainy and will not pulp smoothly, leaving the strained soup thin and gritty.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, celery, onion, pepper, spinach):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, celery, onion, pepper, spinach. 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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