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To Make Pease Porridge

A simple green pea porridge cooked with butter, parsley, chives, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Make Pease Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Boil the peas until tender.

  2. Pulse the peas through a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter with parsley and chives.

  2. Add the pulped peas and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Stir until heated through and 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Peas + chivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together227 recipes

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

  4. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the body of the porridge once cooked and pulped.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and carries the herb flavour.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma to the porridge.
Chives
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and fresh flavour.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, chive, 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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