Name: Peas, the English Way
Ingredients: 1 quart of peas; 2 to 3 ounces of fresh butter; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Peas, the English Way

Ingredients

1 quart of peas
2 to 3 ounces of fresh butter
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

Prepare

Boil the peas until done.
Season with coarse sea salt and 2 to 3 ounces of fresh butter.
Toss the peas and let them cool.
Place the peas in cases or bottles.

Cook

Boil the cases in a bain-marie for about 1 hour.

Serve

To serve, warm the peas in the bain-marie.
Optionally, add a little sugar if desired.

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.

Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas: Form the main bulk of the dish and give it its tender, soft texture when cooked.
Fresh butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel, and keeps the peas moist.

“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.