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Pease Soup

A simple soup made from split peas, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pease Soup

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pease Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the split peas in enough water to cover them, discarding any that float.

Cook and season

  1. Cook the peas in fresh water until soft.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add lemon juice and sherry if desired.

  4. Serve very hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Peas + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

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

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 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 while cooking to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lemon juice
Adds a small acidic brightness that balances the earthy flavour of the peas.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sherry, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sherry, lemon. 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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