Name: Green Peas, Boiled
Ingredients: 1 peck green peas; 3 quarts water; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 sprigs mint

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 ↓

Green Peas, Boiled

Ingredients

1 peck green peas
3 quarts water
1 teaspoon salt
2 sprigs mint

Directions

Prepare

Shell the peas.
Boil the water in a saucepan.

Cook

Add the peas and salt.
Boil for ½ hour with the saucepan well covered.
Drain the peas.

Serve

Serve hot.

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.

Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas: Form the bulk of the dish and supply its soft, sweet, tender texture.
Water: Serves as the cooking liquid that carries heat to the peas.

The step that matters

Boil for ½ hour with the saucepan well covered. The lid traps steam and holds the water near a steady boil, so the peas cook evenly. Without a lid, water evaporates and the temperature drops, so the peas can cook unevenly and take longer to soften.

“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.