Skip to main content
Main

Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, salt pork, beef, celery, parsley, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine water, soaked split peas, salt pork, and beef.

  2. Boil until the mixture reduces to 2 quarts.

  3. Press the soup through a colander back into the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Add celery and parsley to the soup.

  2. Stir in the fried bread slices.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  5. Peas + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Salt pork
Renders fat and seasoning into the broth, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Beef
Adds meaty flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the finished soup.
Bread
Fried in butter until brown, it adds toasty flavour and a little body when stirred in.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture reduces to 2 quarts. Reducing by simmering concentrates the flavour of the broth and thickens it as the peas break down. Boiling too hard or too long can scorch the bottom of the pot, so stir and watch the level.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, beef, celery, parsley, bread, butter):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, celery, parsley, bread, butter. 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.

More split pea soup recipes

Baked 20Yellow 4 See all 228 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes