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Baking

Baked Split Peas

A baked dish of cooked split peas mixed with nut butter, salt, and optional onion or sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and sage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,628 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Split Peas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the peas

  1. Boil the split peas until very dry.

  2. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

Mix and bake

  1. Dissolve the nut butter in a small amount of water, then mix the dissolved nut butter with the cooked peas.

  2. Transfer the mixture to an oiled pudding dish.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

  4. Add grated onion or sage if desired.

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. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  3. Peas + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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
Form the bulk of the dish, providing starch and body once cooked and dried.
Nut butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the split peas until very dry. Excess moisture left in the peas will keep the mixture wet and soft, so it will not set firmly or brown well in the oven. Cooking off the water first helps the peas hold their shape when baked.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, sage):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, sage. 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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