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Another Old Peas Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, beef, vegetables, and butter, finished with flour and dried mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Another Old Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil 5 quarts of water in a large pot.

  2. Add 1 pint of split peas, 1 ounce of butter, 4 pounds of beef, 2 chopped carrots, 3 chopped turnips, 4 heads of celery, 3 chopped onions, salt, and black pepper.

  3. Boil until the peas dissolve and can be easily pulped.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Return the soup to the pot over low heat and add 3 ounces of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  6. Add a small piece of lean ham and boil until ready to serve.

  7. Remove the ham before serving.

Serve

  1. Prepare some celery stewed in butter and fried bread cut into dice.

  2. Serve with dried mint sprinkled 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Beef
Adds savory meaty flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Helps thicken the soup slightly and adds body to the broth.
Onions
Build the aromatic flavor base of the soup as they cook down.

The step that matters

Boil until the peas dissolve and can be easily pulped. Split peas must cook long enough to soften fully, otherwise the soup stays grainy and will not pass smoothly through the sieve.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, carrot, turnip, celery, onion, pepper. 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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