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Boiled Green Peas

A simple boiled green peas dish seasoned with salt, mint, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a saucepan two-thirds full of water and bring it to a boil, adding 1 tablespoon of salt for every quart of water.

  2. Remove any bruised or decayed pods from the peas, wash the good ones in cold water, drain, and shell them.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the peas and mint to the boiling water and cook until tender, then drain and place them in cold water until ready to serve.

  2. Just before serving, warm the peas quickly with a little butter, pepper, and salt, or dress them with your desired sauce.

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 + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + minttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its tender, sweet flavour when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy coating when the peas are warmed.
Fresh mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic flavour that infuses the cooking water and the peas.

The step that matters

Cooking until tender, then chilling. Cooking past tender breaks down the peas' cell walls, making them mushy and dulling their green colour. Draining and placing them in cold water stops the cooking so they keep their texture and colour until serving.

“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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