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Pease Pudding

A boiled split pea pudding made with cream and eggs, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,065 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pease Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Tie up the split peas in a cloth, leaving room for them to swell.

  2. Put the peas into cold water and boil until tender.

  3. Remove the peas from the cloth and rub them through a fine sieve.

Mix and steam

  1. Add the cream and season with salt.

  2. Mix in the egg yolks and whole egg.

  3. Flour a pudding cloth and place it in a small basin.

  4. Pour the mixture into the cloth, tie it up, and set the basin in a kettle of boiling water for 1 hour.

  5. When done, turn it out from the cloth into a warm pudding dish.

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 + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Peas + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Split peas
Form the bulk of the pudding, and when rubbed smooth they give it a thick, soft body.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it steams.
Whole egg
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape when turned out.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving a softer, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth with room to swell. Split peas absorb water and expand considerably as they cook. If the cloth is tied tightly, the peas can burst it or be squeezed unevenly, so leaving room lets them swell safely.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg. 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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