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Peas Porridge

A hearty porridge made with split peas, potatoes, leeks, and aromatics simmered in a broth of onions, celery, and anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Peas Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Fry the onions and celery in a pot.

  2. Add sweet herbs, anchovies or herring, water, bread crust, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil gently until the flavor is extracted from the herbs, then skim and strain the liquid.

Make the porridge

  1. Add grated potatoes and split peas; cook until the peas are soft.

  2. Beat the peas through a sieve with the soup; add flour and butter if needed for thickness.

  3. Boil the leeks in the soup and serve.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 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 during cooking to thicken the soup into a porridge texture.
Potatoes
Starch that thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when added with butter for extra body.

The step that matters

Beat the peas through a sieve. Pushing the cooked peas through a sieve breaks them into a smooth purée that thickens the liquid evenly. Skipping this leaves a grainy, thin texture rather than a uniform porridge.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, bread, pepper, potato, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, bread, pepper, potato, flour, butter. 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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