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Rtch Peas Soup

A thick soup of soaked yellow split peas, brown gravy stock, and sautéed onions, carrots, turnips, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rtch Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup base

  1. Drain the soaked peas and place them in a large soup pot with the brown gravy stock.

  2. Boil gently for 30 minutes.

  3. In a skillet, fry the onions, carrots, and turnips in butter until browned.

  4. Add the fried vegetables to the soup and simmer until the peas are reduced to a pulp.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  6. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

Strain and finish

  1. Pass the soup through a sieve, pressing the vegetables to extract flavor.

  2. In a clean saucepan, combine the strained soup with additional stock if too thick.

  3. Boil quickly to reduce if too thin.

  4. Add the sliced celery.

  5. Cook until the celery is tender.

  6. Mix curry powder with a few spoons of soup. Add it when the soup begins to boil.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with sippets.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned 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

Fine yellow split peas
Break down into a pulp, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Brown gravy stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Onions
Browned in butter, they add sweetness and savory depth.
Carrots
Browned with the onions, they add sweetness and body when strained.
Turnips
Browned with the onions, they add earthy flavor and body when strained.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetable flavor and tender texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Pressing the soup through a sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables pushes their pulp through the mesh, which thickens the soup and carries flavor into it. Skipping this leaves the soup thin and grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, carrot, turnip, butter, pepper, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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