Skip to main content
Main

Split Pea or Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from split peas or beans, cooked with optional ham bone, onion, and thickened with a flour‑butter paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Split Pea or Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick over the split peas or beans.

  2. Wash the split peas or beans in cold water.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the peas or beans with 2 quarts of cold water.

Cook the soup

  1. Do not add salt until nearly done to prevent hardening.

  2. When the soup boils, add ½ cup of cold water.

  3. Let the soup boil again.

  4. Repeat adding cold water every 15 minutes until you've used 2 quarts more.

  5. If desired, add a ham bone or fried onion while boiling.

  6. Add a pinch of baking soda if the peas are hard to cook.

  7. When the peas are very tender, season to taste.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  2. Return the strained soup to the kettle.

  3. Stir in a paste made from 1 teaspoon each of flour and butter.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter 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

Yellow split peas
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred in as a paste with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping stubborn peas soften more quickly.

The step that matters

Adding salt. Salt added too early can keep the pea skins from softening, so the peas stay hard. Wait until they are nearly done before seasoning.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, ham, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, ham, flour, 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

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes