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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas, pork fat, onion, butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick over the split peas.

  2. Soak the peas in water for several hours.

  3. Drain the peas.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, add the soaked peas, cold water, fat salt pork, and chopped onion.

  2. Simmer for three to four hours, or until the peas are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a smooth soup.

  4. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together.

  5. Add the butter and flour mixture to the soup.

  6. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

  7. Dilute the soup with milk, adding more if necessary.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.
Fat salt pork
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the water as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer until the peas are soft. Split peas must cook long enough to break down fully; undercooked peas stay grainy and do not thicken the soup, so the sieved texture will be coarse.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, onion, pepper, pork):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, onion, pepper, pork. 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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