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To Boil Green Peas

A simple boiled green peas dish seasoned with butter, salt, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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To Boil Green Peas

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 ↓

To Boil Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the peas in a colander.

  2. Boil plenty of water in a saucepan.

  3. Add salt to the boiling water.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the peas to the boiling water and cook uncovered until tender, about 15 to 25 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas.

  3. Serve hot with melted butter or a slice of fresh butter on top.

  4. If desired, serve mint separately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Young, freshly shelled peas
Provide the main body of the dish; tender young peas cook quickly and stay sweet.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the hot peas.

The step that matters

Cook the peas until just tender. Peas turn dull, mushy and starchy when overcooked, so checking them from the low end of the cooking time keeps their color, sweetness and texture.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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