Name: Peas Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart dried peas; 2 ounces butter; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; flour for dusting; optional: 2 teaspoons dried powdered mint or savory herbs; optional: cold potatoes

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

Soak the peas in water overnight and discard any that float.
Drain the peas and tie them in a pudding cloth, leaving room for swelling.

Cook and shape

Place the cloth in cold water and boil for 2 to 3 hours until tender.
Remove from water, untie the cloth, and pass the peas through a colander or wire sieve.
Mix in the butter, pepper, and salt.
Dust the cloth with flour and tie it up again.
Boil for another hour, then turn out and serve.
Mix in mint or leftover cold potatoes.

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).
Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,016 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried peas: Form the bulk of the pudding; their starch softens and thickens into a dense, spoonable mass when boiled.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the mashed peas.

The step that matters

Pass the peas through a sieve after boiling. Hot cooked peas are soft enough to press through a sieve into a smooth purée; if they are under-cooked, they will stay grainy and lumpy. Leaving room in the cloth matters because peas swell as they absorb water.

Swap the mint

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

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, pepper, flour, potato. 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.