Name: Peas Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint split peas; butter; coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Peas Pudding

Ingredients

1 pint split peas
butter
coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare

Wash and soak the split peas in warm water.
Tie the peas in a clean cloth.

Cook and serve

Place the cloth in a saucepan of hot water and boil until soft.
Mash the peas with a little butter and salt before serving.
Serve with boiled pork or beef.

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.

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

Split peas: Form the main body of the pudding, softening into a thick, mashable texture when boiled.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed peas a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

“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.