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Split Pease Pudding

A thickened pudding made from split peas, butter, salt, pepper, and baking soda, served with boiled pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Split Pease Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Tie the split peas and baking soda in a cloth, leaving room to swell.

  2. Boil in a pot of water for 2 hours.

  3. Rub the cooked peas through a sieve.

Shape and serve

  1. In a pan, combine the sieved peas with salt, pepper, and 1 ounce of butter.

  2. Add a little of the boiling water and stir until thick.

  3. Butter a basin and press the mixture into it to shape.

  4. Turn out onto a serving dish or slice to serve with boiled pork.

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. Butter + white peppertop 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

Split peas
Form the main body of the pudding, setting into a firm, spoonable mass when cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sieved peas.
Baking soda
Softens the peas' skins so they break down more easily during the long boil.

The step that matters

Stirring the sieved peas until thick. Adding too much boiling water or stopping too early leaves the mixture loose and unable to hold its shape when pressed into the basin. Cooking it down until thick lets the starch in the peas set as it cools.

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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