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Corned Pork with Peas

A stew of corned pork and green peas cooked in butter, flour, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Pour in the boiling water, then add the 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 and cook for an additional hour.

Strain and serve

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

  2. 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
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks with the melted butter, giving the sauce body.
Green peas
Form the bulk of the dish, adding sweet, earthy flavour and soft texture.
Corned pork
Provides salty, savoury meat flavour that seasons the whole dish.

The step that matters

Washing the corned pork in three waters. Corned pork is cured in salt and can be very salty. Rinsing it in several changes of water removes surface brine and excess salt, so the finished sauce and peas are not overly salty.

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.

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