Skip to main content
Main

Corned Pork with Peas

A stew of corned pork, peas, butter, flour, and herbs simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Corned Pork with Peas

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and add chopped herbs and pepper.

Cook the pork and peas

  1. Wash the corned pork in three waters and add it to the stew-pan.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes, then add the green peas.

  3. Let it cook for an additional hour.

  4. Remove the herbs and pork, then pass the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Serve the peas around the pork.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Melted fat that carries flavour and gives the base of the sauce a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce when stirred with the fat.
Corned pork
Main meat, which is salted and cooked until tender in the sauce.
Green peas
Main vegetable that cooks down into the sauce and is served around the pork.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. If the flour is not stirred in evenly, it forms lumps when the boiling water is added. Cooking the flour briefly in the fat helps it thicken smoothly and removes its raw taste.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, pork. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes