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Peas Soup Without Meat or Bones

A hearty split pea soup made with water, dripping, onions, carrots, turnip, salt, and pepper, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Peas Soup Without Meat or Bones

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse the split peas and place them in a large saucepan with the dripping.

  2. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, then add the water.

Make the soup

  1. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Boil for 2 hours or until the peas are soft and the soup is thick.

  4. If the soup becomes too thick, add a little boiling water.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down during long simmering to give the soup its body and thickness.
Dripping
Fat that carries flavour and adds richness to the soup.
Onions
Soften and release sweetness, adding depth to the base flavour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour while softening into the soup.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly peppery sweetness as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours until the peas are soft. Split peas need a long simmer to break down fully. Stopping early leaves them firm and the soup thin and grainy. Keep the heat steady so the peas cook through without scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the peas

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

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

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