Name: Split Peas
Ingredients: 2 cups split peas; 1 tablespoon salt; 2 heaping tablespoons butter

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 ↓

Split Peas

Ingredients

2 cups split peas
1 tablespoon salt
2 heaping tablespoons butter

Directions

Wash the split peas.
In a pot, combine the washed split peas, salt, and butter.
Boil for one hour or until the peas are soft.

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 bulk of the dish and soften into a thick, tender texture as they cook.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the cooked peas a smoother 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.