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 ↓
To Boil Peas
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick over the peas, but do not wash them.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the peas.
Boil the peas for 30 minutes.
Drain the peas through a colander.
Finish and serve
Transfer the peas to a tin dish and add butter and salt.
Stir the peas and keep them hot while serving the meat.
If the peas are older, boil them longer and add baking soda to the water.
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.
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Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Peas
- Form the main body of the dish, cooking until tender and soft.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky coating that carries flavor across the peas.
- Baking soda
- Raises the cooking water's pH, helping older peas soften more quickly.
The step that matters
Boiling older peas. Older peas have tougher skins and firmer cell walls, so they may stay hard if boiled only for the standard time. Extra boiling and a little baking soda in the water help soften them, but adding too much soda can make peas mushy and give them a soapy taste.
“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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