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Stewed Split Peas

A simple stew of split peas cooked slowly with water and seasoned with coarse sea salt, optionally finished with nut butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Split Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Rinse the split peas and place them in a pot with cold water.

  2. Cook slowly, allowing the peas to swell.

  3. Add hot water as needed to prevent burning.

  4. Cook until the peas are mushy.

Finish

  1. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. If desired, stir in 1 teaspoon of nut butter for added flavor.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Their starch thickens as they cook, giving the stew its body and mushy texture.
Nut butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the peas.

The step that matters

Add hot water as needed to prevent burning. Split peas are starchy and thicken as they swell, so the bottom of the pot can scorch. Adding hot water keeps the liquid level up and reduces sticking, while hot water keeps the simmer going without stalling the cooking.

“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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