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Peas Plain Boiled

Plain boiled peas seasoned with mint, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,372 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Peas Plain Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Bring a large pan of spring water to a boil.

  2. Add the peas, a handful of coarse sea salt, and the stalk of mint.

  3. Once cooked, drain the peas in a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stewpan, toss the peas with butter, a little salt, and pepper.

  2. If serving as a second course, omit the pepper and ensure the peas are very young.

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. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas (in the method)
Provide the main body and sweet, fresh flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the peas and giving a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Drain the peas once cooked. Leftover cooking water left on the peas dilutes the butter and seasoning, so they taste watery and the butter does not coat them well. Draining thoroughly lets the butter cling to the peas.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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