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Peas Soup Without Meat

A hearty split pea soup simmered with onions, carrots, turnip, celery, and seasonings, served with fried or toasted bread.

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 and remove any worm-eaten peas.

  2. Combine peas and cold water in a pot and boil until tender.

Make the vegetables

  1. Fry onions, grated carrots, and sliced turnip in butter until browned.

  2. Add black pepper and coarse sea salt to the vegetables and stew until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Press the mixture through a sieve into a clean pot.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Add sliced celery.

  4. Adjust seasoning if needed.

  5. Serve hot with diced fried or toasted bread.

  6. Add Chili vinegar or mushroom catsup if desired.

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
Break down during boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweet, savoury depth of flavour.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, and soften to thicken when pressed.
Turnip
Contributes a mild, slightly peppery flavour and soft body when stewed.
Celery
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked peas and vegetables through a sieve breaks them into a smooth, even purée. If the mixture is not soft enough from stewing and boiling, it will not pass through cleanly and the soup stays grainy.

Swap the peas

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

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

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

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