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Green Peas

A simple dish of boiled green peas seasoned with butter, pepper, salt, optional sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Green Peas

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Boil the pea pods until tender and strain the water.

  2. Cook the peas in the strained water.

Season and finish

  1. Season with butter, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. If the peas are old, add a little sugar to improve the flavor.

  3. Add cream 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 dish and provide its fresh, sweet vegetable flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the peas.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the texture of the finished peas.
Sugar
Restores sweetness in older peas, whose sugars have converted to starch.

The step that matters

Adding sugar to old peas. As peas age, their natural sugars convert to starch, making them taste starchy and dull. A little sugar restores sweetness and balances the flavor, so add it only when the peas are old.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, cream, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, sugar. 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.

More green peas recipes

Boiled 92Stewed 36Preserved 26Creamed 22Soup 14French 13 See all 150 →

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