Skip to main content
Main

Another Old Peas Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, ham or bacon, mutton or salt beef, and served with toasted bread and dried mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Another Old Peas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, boil 4 quarts of water with the ham or bacon, mutton or salt beef, and split peas until the peas are soft.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and mash the peas with the back of a spoon until pulped.

  3. Return the soup to the pot and simmer gently for 1 hour before serving.

Prepare the bread and serve

  1. Toast the bread and cut the toasted bread into dice.

  2. Fry the diced bread in butter if desired.

  3. Serve the fried bread in the soup or on the side, with dried mint in a small dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  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 when simmered to thicken the soup and give it body.
Ham or bacon
Adds smoky, savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Mutton or salt beef
Adds meaty richness and savoury depth to the broth.
Butter
Browns the bread and adds richness when frying the croutons.

The step that matters

Simmering the soup until the peas are soft. Split peas must cook until fully tender before straining and mashing. Undercooked peas stay grainy and will not pulp smoothly, leaving the soup thin and gritty.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, mutton, peas, pepper, butter, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, mutton, peas, pepper, butter, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes