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Baking

Baked Soup

A hearty soup made by baking lean meat, onions, carrots, rice, and split peas with water, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In an earthen jug or stewpan, combine the sliced meat, onions, carrots, soaked rice, and split peas.

  2. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Bake

  1. Cover the mixture with water and close the lid tightly.

  2. Bake alongside your 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean meat
Provides the main savoury body and rich flavour of the soup.
Split peas
Thicken the soup as they soften and add earthy body and substance.
Rice
Adds starch that thickens the liquid and gives a softer, creamier texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook slowly.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and colour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cover the mixture tightly before baking. A tight lid traps steam so the water stays in the pot and the peas, rice and meat cook through in moist heat. If steam escapes, the liquid can reduce too far and the legumes may stay firm.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, carrot, rice, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, carrot, rice, 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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