Name: Pork Cheese
Ingredients: 1 dessert spoonful coarse sea salt; cold water; peas; butter; yolks of eggs

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 ↓

Pork Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the peas in water.
Place the soaked peas in a saucepan, add salt, and cover with cold water.
Cook gently for about 30 minutes or until soft, replacing water as it boils away.
Rub the peas through a fine sieve.
Add butter and yolks of eggs, then season to taste.
Press the puree into a well-buttered mold or basin.
Steam or bake for about 40 minutes.

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).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Peas + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,065 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).