Skip to main content
Main

Peas, Boiled Green

Boiled green peas with salt, sugar, butter, and optional mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, Boiled Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas and wash them well in cold water.

  2. Drain the peas and put them into a saucepan with fast-boiling water.

  3. Add salt and sugar to the water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the peas quickly over a brisk fire with the lid uncovered.

  2. When tender, pour them into a colander.

  3. Transfer the peas to a serving dish and place a piece of butter in the center.

  4. Optionally, boil a small bunch of mint with the peas or garnish with it.

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. Walnut + minttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Peas + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main vegetable; quick boiling keeps them tender and bright green.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat as it melts over the hot peas.
Sugar
Adds a slight sweetness that balances the salt and rounds out the peas' flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the peas quickly with the lid uncovered. Boiling fast in an open pan keeps the water at a strong boil and lets green vegetables retain their bright color. A slow boil or a covered pot can dull the color and overcook the peas.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, peas, butter, walnut):

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

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes