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To Keep Green Peas Till Christmas

A method for preserving green peas by drying, storing in fat, and reconstituting with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

  1. Shell the peas.

  2. Put the shelled peas into boiling water with some salt, and boil for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Drain the peas in a colander, then spread the peas on a cloth to dry them well.

Preserve

  1. Fill bottles with the dried peas.

  2. Cover the bottles with fried mutton fat.

  3. Cork the bottles tightly, tie a bladder over the bottles, and store the bottles in a cool place.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil water with a little salt, sugar, and a piece of butter.

  2. Drain the cooked peas.

  3. Place the peas in a saucepan with butter, stirring until melted.

  4. Transfer the peas to a dish.

  5. Serve.

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 + muttontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Fresh green peas
The main ingredient, whose texture and sweetness define the finished dish.
Mutton fat
Covers the peas in the bottles, sealing them from air to help keep them preserved.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy coating to the cooked peas.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to the cooking water, balancing the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the peas before bottling. Any surface water left on the peas can dilute the protective fat and encourage spoilage in storage, so the peas should be thoroughly dry before filling the bottles.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, sugar. 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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