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Peas Soup and Pickled Pork

A pea soup served with pickled pork, diced toast, and dried mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Peas Soup and Pickled Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and strain the pea soup without adding salt.

  2. Wash and scrape the pickled pork, then add it to the strained soup.

Cook

  1. Simmer for about 2 hours until the pork is tender.

  2. Remove the pork and rinse it with 1 cup of hot water.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup in a tureen with diced toast and dried mint on the side.

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. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

  3. Pork + minttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled pork
Adds savory, salty flavor and rich fat to the soup as it simmers.
Peas soup
Forms the thick, starchy base that gives the soup its body.

The step that matters

Simmer for about 2 hours until the pork is tender. Pickled pork is brined and firm, and only long, gentle simmering breaks down its connective tissue. Stopping early leaves it chewy, while a hard boil can toughen the meat and cloud the soup.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, peas):

  1. Mintthe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, peas. 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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