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Canned Peas

Peas cooked in water with salt, white pepper, and butter, served immediately.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Canned Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove peas from the pods and place them in a chafing dish.

  2. Add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, about 1 pint.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the chafing dish to cook the peas with steam.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, and add a generous amount of butter.

  3. Serve immediately to retain their delicate green color.

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

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

  2. Peas + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Are the main ingredient, cooked gently in steam until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat that carries flavor over the peas.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Peas lose their bright green color as they sit after cooking, so serving them promptly keeps the color vivid and the texture delicate.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Mintfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter. 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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