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Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked split peas, water, butter, flour, and seasonings, served with fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick over and wash the dried split peas, then soak them overnight and drain.

Cook the soup

  1. Boil the peas in 2 quarts of cold water, simmering until dissolved, adding more water as needed to maintain 2 quarts.

  2. Once soft, rub the peas through a sieve and return to the pot to boil again.

  3. Add milk or cream to achieve your desired consistency.

  4. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together, then add to the boiling soup.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with fried bread cubes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Dried split peas
Break down into a thick, smooth body as the soup's main structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when cooked with flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by cooking with butter to form a roux.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour roux. Cook the butter and flour together first so the starch swells and thickens evenly. Adding raw flour directly to hot liquid tends to form lumps that are hard to smooth out.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, 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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