Name: Steamed Peas
Ingredients: 2 cups green peas; ½ cup hot milk; Salt to taste

Why it works: Peas and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,309 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Steamed Peas

Ingredients

2 cups green peas
½ cup hot milk
Salt to taste

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Place green peas in a basin or earthen dish without water.
Set the dish in a steamer and steam for 15 minutes or until tender.
Season with salt and add hot milk to make them creamy.

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 + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,309 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 of the dish, softening into a tender texture as they steam.
Hot milk: Adds moisture and richness, turning the peas creamy.

“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.