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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, vegetables, and stock, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the peas and soak them in water for about 12 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the soaked peas, bones (if using), and stock, then bring to a boil.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables to the boiling stock and simmer for about 3 hours.

  3. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve, return it to the saucepan.

  4. Mix the flour with a little water until smooth, then add it to the soup and boil.

Serve

  1. Season to taste and serve, placing the dried mint in the tureen before pouring the soup over it.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried split peas
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Flour
Mixed with water and boiled into the soup to thicken it further.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it simmers, adding savoury depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smooth with water first, then boiled, so it thickens evenly without lumps. Added dry or unmixed, it clumps and the soup stays uneven in texture.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, flour. 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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