Name: Puree of Green Peas
Ingredients: 2 cups green peas; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste

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 ↓

Puree of Green Peas

Ingredients

2 cups green peas
2 tablespoons butter
Salt to taste

Directions

Cook the green peas in boiling water until tender.
Drain and puree the peas in a blender or food processor.
Stir in the butter and season with salt.
Serve warm.

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.

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

Green peas: Form the main body of the puree, giving bulk, color and most of the flavor.
Butter: Adds fat, which makes the puree smoother and richer in mouthfeel.

“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.