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Boiled Peas

A simple boiled pea dish seasoned with salt, sugar, mint, baking soda, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Boiled Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Place the peas in boiling water.

  2. Add salt, sugar, mint, and baking soda.

  3. Boil gently, uncovered, until tender, about 20 minutes for young peas and longer for older ones.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the peas and return them to the saucepan.

  2. Add butter and toss over heat just to melt the butter.

  3. Serve very 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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mint + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
The main vegetable, cooked until tender to form the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky coating on the peas.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness that rounds out the flavour of the peas.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic herbal note.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping peas soften and keep their green colour.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. Peas go from tender to mushy quickly, and older peas need longer. Checking for tenderness rather than relying only on the clock keeps their texture right.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Mintthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, sugar, 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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