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To Keep Green Peas Till Christmas

A method of preserving green peas for use at Christmas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Keep Green Peas Till Christmas

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell the peas and throw them into boiling water with salt.

  2. Let them simmer for 5-6 minutes, then drain.

  3. Spread the peas on a cloth to dry well.

Preserve

  1. Fill bottles with the dried peas and cover with mutton suet.

  2. Cork the bottles, tie a bladder and a lath over them, and store in a cool, dry place.

Cook to serve

  1. When ready to use, boil water with salt, sugar, and butter.

  2. Add the peas to the boiling water, then drain in a sieve.

  3. Transfer the peas to a saucepan with a piece of butter, serve 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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main vegetable and the bulk of the dish.
Mutton suet (in the method)
Covers the peas in the bottles, sealing out air to help preserve them.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish when the peas are served.

The step that matters

Drying the peas before bottling. Peas must be dry before they go into the bottles, because surface moisture can promote spoilage. Thorough drying helps the preserved peas keep.

“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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