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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
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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 split peas and soak them overnight in the stock.

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

  3. Fry the vegetables in a little fat, reserving a carrot, and add them to the boiling liquid.

Cook and strain

  1. Skim the soup well and cook for about three hours until it can be passed through a sieve.

  2. Return the soup to the pan, add the grated carrot and any desired thickening, and boil for another half hour.

Season and serve

  1. Season to taste and serve with dried mint or sage and fried or toasted bread.

  2. For extra flavor, add a teaspoon or more of curry powder per quart.

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 simmering to give the soup its body and thick texture.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that carries the flavor of the whole soup.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and color, and its grated pieces are added near the end for fresh flavor.
Thickening
Helps the soup become thicker and more velvety when boiled in at the end.

The step that matters

Skimming and sieving after the long simmer. Skimming removes foam and fat that would make the soup greasy and cloudy. Simmering until the peas are fully soft lets the soup pass through a sieve smoothly, so it sets with the right texture.

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.

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