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Boiled Gkeen Peas

A simple boiled pea dish seasoned with salt, sugar, butter, and optional mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Boiled Gkeen Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas and wash them well in cold water, then drain the peas.

Boil and drain

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 gallon of water to a fast boil.

  2. Add salt and sugar.

  3. Add the peas to the boiling water and cook uncovered over high heat.

  4. When tender, pour the peas into a colander.

Serve

  1. Transfer the peas to a hot serving dish and place a piece of butter in the center.

  2. Optionally, boil a small bunch of mint with the peas or garnish with mint.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Walnut + minttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 recipes

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

  3. Peas + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, sweet texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the hot peas.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to balance the peas' savory flavor.

The step that matters

When tender, pour the peas into a colander. Peas keep cooking from residual heat, so draining as soon as they are tender prevents them from turning soft and dull. Cooking uncovered over high heat helps keep the water boiling and the color bright.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, peas, butter, walnut):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, peas, butter, walnut. 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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