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To Boil Peas

A simple boiled green peas dish seasoned with salt, baking soda, mint, and topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Boil Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Shell the peas and immediately place them in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Add salt and baking soda, then return to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat to prevent peas from cooking too fast; boil for 20 to 30 minutes.

Drain and serve

  1. Pour peas into a hot colander and let drain.

  2. Heap peas on a serving dish, add a piece of fresh butter on top, cover, and serve.

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. Mint + buttertop 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, becoming tender as they cook through.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the hot peas.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, which helps peas soften and keeps their color bright.

The step that matters

Reduce heat before boiling the peas. A rolling boil breaks peas apart and cooks them unevenly. Keeping the heat lower after returning to a boil lets them cook gently and stay whole.

“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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