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Pea Soup

A hearty soup made with split peas, salt pork, ham, crackers, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pea Soup

Why it works: Pork and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,638 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Wash the split peas and place them in a soup kettle with 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Boil for 1 hour, then add the lean salt pork and boil for an additional 2 hours. Stir frequently to prevent burning.

  3. Near the end of cooking, add the thin slices of ham, split crackers, and season with pepper and salt.

  4. If the soup thickens too much, add boiling water and stir.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a tureen.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Peas + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Peas + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together402 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, 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 boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lean salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the broth as it simmers.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky meat flavor to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring and thinning the soup. Split peas settle and scorch on the bottom of the kettle during a long simmer, and they keep thickening as they cook. Stirring often prevents burning, and adding boiling water restores a pourable consistency without diluting the flavor much.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, ham, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, ham, pepper. 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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