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Green Peas

A simple boiled green pea dish seasoned with butter, pepper, and optional sugar, mint, or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Green Peas

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 ↓

Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the peas in water with a little salt, uncovered.

  2. Once cooked, drain the peas and add butter and pepper.

  3. If the peas are older, cook them with a little water, add butter, salt, and sugar.

  4. Serve with cream or additional butter 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young green peas
Provide the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooked peas.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness, which can help offset the starchiness of older peas.

The step that matters

Cooking older peas with a little water. Older peas have tougher skins and starchier interiors, so they need added water and time to soften fully. Boiling them uncovered like young peas may leave them tough or dry.

Swap the mint

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

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

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