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Green Pea Cakes

A batter of mashed green peas, butter, pepper, salt, eggs, milk, and flour fried into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Green Pea Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mash the hot green peas with butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then beat in the eggs and milk.

  3. Gradually add the flour until the batter is smooth and not thick.

Cook

  1. Fry the batter on a griddle like pancakes until golden brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Green peas
Provide the main body and flavour of the cakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the cakes set as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a smooth consistency.
Prepared flour
Gives the batter structure so the cakes hold together when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Add the flour gradually. Adding flour slowly while mixing keeps the batter smooth and free of lumps. Too much flour at once makes it thick and dense, which can leave the cakes heavy and hard to fry evenly.

Swap the peas

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

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

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