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Pea-soup

A hearty soup made from green or split peas, salt pork, lean meat, and thickened with flour or mashed peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,208 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Pea-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the green pea base

  1. Boil 2 quarts of green peas in enough water to cover them for 1 hour with a few slices of salt pork.

  2. Strain the peas.

  3. Add salt if needed.

  4. Thicken with 1 large spoon of flour mixed with cold water or by mashing ¼ of the peas.

  5. Add a little butter.

  6. Serve.

Make the split pea soup

  1. Soak 1 pint of split peas overnight in 1 pint of cold water.

  2. Add 3 quarts of cold water and 1 pound of lean meat.

  3. Boil for 3.5 hours.

  4. If the water boils away, add enough to maintain 3 quarts when done.

  5. Strain if necessary.

  6. 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. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Peas + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Break down into the body and thickness of the soup.
Split peas
Break down during long boiling to give the soup a thick, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Lean meat
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the cooking liquid during the long boil.
Salt pork
Flavors the peas with salty, savory fat as they boil.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour mixed in cold water. Flour stirred into cold water first disperses evenly so it does not clump; added directly to hot soup it forms lumps that stay in the soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, butter, meat):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, butter, meat. 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 →

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