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Peas Soup Without Meat

A hearty soup made from split peas, vegetables, and butter, simmered until smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Peas Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Rinse the peas and remove any worm-eaten ones.

  2. In a large pot, combine the peas and cold water, and boil until tender.

Make the soup

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the onions, carrots, and turnips until browned.

  2. Add the fried vegetables to the pot with the peas, along with black pepper and salt.

  3. Simmer gently, stirring often, until the vegetables are tender enough to pass through a sieve.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a clean pot and bring to a boil.

  5. Add the sliced celery and adjust seasoning if necessary.

  6. Cook for an additional 20 minutes, then serve hot with fried or toasted bread cubes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Split peas
Main body of the soup; they break down during long simmering to thicken it.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body once softened and pushed through the sieve.
Turnips
Soften during cooking and add body and a mild sweetness to the purée.
Butter
Fat that carries the browning of the vegetables and adds richness.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic note to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. The vegetables and peas must be fully softened before sieving, or the purée will be grainy and hard to push through. Stirring often during simmering prevents the bottom from sticking and scorching.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, butter, pepper, celery, vinegar. 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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