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Pea Salad

A salad of peas, cheese, sweet pickles, onions, nuts, salad dressing, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Pea Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook and season the peas, then cool them.

  2. Cube the cheese and chop the pickles and onions before measuring.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toss all ingredients together with a fork.

  2. Mix with the salad dressing and serve on very cold lettuce.

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 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

Peas
Provides the main bulk and tender texture of the salad.
Cheese
Adds fat and savory richness that rounds out the dressing.
Sweet pickles
Adds sweetness and acidity that brighten the salad.
Onions
Adds sharp aroma and a bit of bite.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and binds the other ingredients together.

The step that matters

Cool the peas fully before mixing. Warm peas soften the cheese and thin the dressing, so the salad turns greasy and loose instead of holding its shape.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, cheese, onion, lettuce):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, cheese, onion, lettuce. 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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