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Plain Boiled Peas

A simple dish of boiled peas seasoned with salt, mint, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Plain Boiled Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Shell the peas and boil them in salted boiling water for about 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas using a fine sieve.

  3. Chop the mint finely or add a bundle of mint to the boiling peas.

Serve

  1. Serve the peas with melted butter in a small dish.

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 + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

Fresh peas
Main ingredient; their starch and natural sugars give the dish its body and sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel when melted over the hot peas.
Fresh mint
Adds aroma and freshness as its volatile oils release into the hot water or peas.

The step that matters

Timing the boil. Peas cooked too long lose their bright green color and turn soft and mushy, because prolonged heat breaks down their cell walls and chlorophyll. Start checking near the stated time and drain promptly.

“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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