Skip to main content
Main

Peas Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, vegetables, stock, and optional thickening, served with dried mint or sage and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the peas and soak them overnight in the stock.

  2. Put the soaked peas in a pot with a bit of dripping or pot skimmings and bring to a boil.

  3. Fry the vegetables in a little fat, reserving one carrot.

  4. Add the fried vegetables to the boiling liquid.

  5. Skim the soup well.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook for about three hours until it can be passed through a sieve.

  2. Return the soup to the pan.

  3. Add the grated carrot and any desired thickening.

  4. Boil for another half hour.

  5. Season to taste.

  6. Optionally, add curry powder to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with dried mint or sage and fried or toasted bread.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  5. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that carries the flavour of the soup.
Vegetables
Add sweetness and savoury depth when fried before simmering.
Dripping
Adds fat and richness to the initial boil.
Thickening
Adds extra body to the soup in the final simmer.

The step that matters

Skim the soup well. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the stock comes to a boil, keeping the soup clean in flavour and colour before the long simmer.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, pepper, mint, bread. 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.

More pea soup recipes

Green 380Split 228Baked Split 20Creamed 13Dried 10Winter 9 See all 368 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes