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Pease Pudding

Pease pudding is a boiled pea mixture made with butter, sugar, pepper, salt, and egg, wrapped in cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pease Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Drain the soaked peas and tie them loosely in a cloth.

  2. Place the cloth in cold water over heat and boil for 2 hours until tender.

Make and boil the pudding

  1. Rub the peas through a sieve and mix with butter, sugar, pepper, salt, and beaten egg.

  2. Tie the mixture tightly in a floured cloth and plunge it into boiling water.

  3. Boil quickly for 1 hour.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 main body of the pudding, becoming soft and thick when cooked and sieved.
Egg
Binds the mashed peas so the pudding holds together when boiled.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Tying the mixture tightly in the floured cloth. A loose cloth lets water seep in and the pudding turns soggy and falls apart. A floured cloth forms a dry skin that helps the pudding hold its shape while it cooks.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, egg, flour. 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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