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Soup From Split Peas

A hearty soup made with split peas, vegetables, and leftover meat, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup From Split Peas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In an earthen jug or pan, combine the soaked peas, pepper, salt, and water.

  2. Cover tightly and bake alongside bread at 400°F (200°C).

Finish the soup

  1. Save boiling water from cooked meat and add it to the soup for flavor.

  2. Add chopped vegetables and any leftover meat to the soup after the peas have been pulped.

  3. Simmer until the vegetables are tender and the soup is nutritious.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Leek + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

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

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 cooking to thicken the soup and give it body.
Leftover meat
Adds savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Potatoes
Starch that softens and helps thicken the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Bake the peas until they are fully pulped. Peas must soften completely before the vegetables go in. Starch in split peas gelatinises and breaks down with long, moist heat, which thickens the soup. If the peas stay firm, the soup will be grainy and thin.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, meat, ham, turnip, carrot, leek, potato):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, meat, ham, turnip, carrot, leek, potato. 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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