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Boiled Leg of Pork with Pease Pudding

A boiled leg of pork served with a pease pudding made from soaked peas, butter, salt, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,933 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Pork with Pease Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Rub the leg of pork with coarse sea salt and cover it with salt in a vessel.

  2. Let it stand for 10 days.

  3. After 10 days, boil the pork in soft water.

Make the pease pudding

  1. Soak the dry peas in cold, soft water for 2 hours.

  2. Tie the soaked peas in a clean bag and boil them with the pork.

  3. Once the peas are done, strain them through a colander.

  4. Mix the strained peas with a large lump of butter, some salt, and 2 egg yolks.

  5. Put the mixture back into the bag and boil again for 30 minutes.

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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Peas + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Salt-cured meat that becomes tender and flavourful when boiled.
Dry peas
Break down during boiling into a soft, thick purée that forms the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the pease pudding.
Egg yolks
Bind the puréed peas and help the pudding set into a firm, sliceable texture.

The step that matters

Put the mixture back into the bag and boil again for 30 minutes. Boiling the egg-enriched purée lets the yolks coagulate and set the pudding; too vigorous a boil can make it grainy or cause the bag to burst, so keep a gentle simmer.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, egg. 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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