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Green Peas, English Style

A boiled green pea dish with parsley, lettuce, green onions, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Green Peas, English Style

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 2 gallons of water to a boil in a large saucepan.

  2. Add 5 pounds of shelled green peas, a bunch of parsley, a head of lettuce, a few green onions, and salt.

  3. Boil until the peas are tender.

  4. Drain the peas and remove the parsley faggot.

  5. Serve the peas with a piece of butter in the middle and on top.

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. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Forms the main body of the dish and gives its sweet, fresh flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating as it melts over the hot peas.
Lettuce
Adds gentle sweetness and moisture to the cooking water, softening the flavor of the peas.

The step that matters

Boil until the peas are tender. Peas need to cook long enough to soften fully, but overcooking dulls their bright green color and turns them mushy. Check them often and drain as soon as they are tender.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lettuce, onion, 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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