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Green Peas with New Potatoes

A side dish of green peas and new potatoes cooked with salt pork, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Green Peas with New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the diced salt pork in the bottom of a kettle.

  2. Add the new potatoes and green peas.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook until tender, then drain all but ½ cup of water.

  2. Stir in the milk and thicken with a little flour.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat that flavours the dish and gives savoury depth.
New potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish once cooked until tender.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, vegetal flavour to the dish.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the reduced cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the milk and liquid into a light, smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk and thicken with a little flour. Adding milk to boiling liquid can curdle it, and flour added straight to liquid forms lumps. Lower the heat, whisk the flour into the milk first, then stir it in gradually so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, potato, pepper, 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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