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Peas, Plainly Boiled

A simple boiled pea dish flavored with mint, sugar, butter, flour, lettuce, and bouquet garni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Peas, Plainly Boiled

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

First cook

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Put the peas, mint, and water into a paper bag and seal it.

  3. Cook in the oven for 35 to 45 minutes.

Combine and finish

  1. In a basin, combine the peas, sugar, butter, flour, salt, chopped lettuce, bouquet garni, and water, then mix well and place in a bag.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes in the oven.

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 + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Mint + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Make up the bulk of the dish and supply most of its flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid, giving the peas a light body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the flavour of the peas.
Lettuce
Adds moisture and softens as it cooks, giving a tender texture.

The step that matters

Sealing the bag for the second cook. The sealed bag traps steam so the peas cook in their own moisture and butter. If the bag is not sealed well, steam escapes, the peas can dry out, and the sauce may thicken unevenly.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, sugar, butter, flour, lettuce. 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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