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Steamed Peas

A simple dish of green peas steamed and seasoned with butter, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Peas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Place green peas in a basin or earthen dish without water.

  2. Set the dish in a steamer and steam for about 15 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper when tender.

  4. Stir in butter and hot milk to make them creamy.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 the tender, sweet vegetable texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the peas a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Hot milk
Adds moisture and creaminess when stirred into the cooked peas.

The step that matters

Season with salt and pepper when tender. Salt added before the peas are tender can slow softening in the cell walls, so the seasoning is best added once they are soft, when the flavour is easier to judge.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, milk, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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