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Green Peas, English Style

A boiled green pea dish with parsley, lettuce, green onions, butter, and optional mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Green Peas, English Style

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Bring 2 gallons of water to a boil in a saucepan over high heat.

  2. Add 5 pounds of shelled green peas, a bunch of parsley, a head of lettuce, and a few green onions.

  3. Season with salt and let boil until tender.

  4. Drain the peas and remove the parsley faggot.

Serve

  1. Serve the peas with a piece of butter in the middle and another piece on top.

  2. Optionally, add a sprig of mint with the parsley or sprinkle finely chopped mint over the peas.

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. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sweet as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat to the cooked peas.
Lettuce
Adds moisture and a mild, sweet flavour as it softens in the cooking water.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the cooking water and peas.

The step that matters

Let the peas boil until tender. Green peas need enough time in boiling water for their starches to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm and floury, while overcooking dulls their bright green colour.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lettuce, onion, butter):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lettuce, onion, 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.

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