Name: Dried or Split Pea Soup
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton or calf's head stock; 1 head of celery, sliced; 1 carrot, sliced; 1 turnip, sliced; 2 onions, sliced; sufficient dried or split peas; 1 crust of bread (size of a roll); dried mint (for serving); salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Dried or Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

If using pork stock, discard some of the salty liquid and mix with fresh water.
Bring the stock to a boil and add the celery, carrot, turnip, and onions.

Cook the soup

In a separate pot, boil the peas in fresh water until they can be mashed.
Add the mashed peas and bread crust to the broth and boil for 1 hour.
Rub the mixture through a sieve and season to taste.
Serve with dried mint on the side.

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.

Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,137 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried or split peas: Break down when boiled and mashed to thicken the soup and give it body.
Stock: Provides the savory liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Bread crust: Adds body and helps thicken the soup as it simmers with the peas.
Onions: Build savory depth and sweetness as they soften in the broth.

Swap the mint

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

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Mintthe original

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