Why it works: Peas and mutton work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
To Keep Green Peas Till Christmas
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peas
Shell the peas and drain them in a colander.
Lay a cloth four or five times doubled and spread the peas on it to dry.
Pack and seal
Fill bottles with the dried peas and cover them with mutton suet fat.
When slightly cool, fill the necks of the bottles almost to the top.
Cork the bottles and tie a bladder and leather over them.
Store the bottles in a dry place.
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.
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Peas + muttontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together598 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
- Young peas
- The main ingredient, preserved whole after being dried so they keep for storage.
- Mutton suet fat
- Covers the peas to exclude air, helping keep them from spoiling in storage.
The step that matters
Drying the peas before packing. Peas must be fully dry before they go into the bottles. Surface moisture left on them can encourage spoilage under the fat, so the peas should be spread on the cloth until dry.
“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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