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To Boil Peas

A simple boiled pea dish flavored with mint, salt, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Boil Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas.

  2. Remove any worm-eaten peas.

  3. Boil water.

Cook

  1. Add the mint tied with string and salt.

  2. Add the peas once the water is boiling.

  3. Strain the peas in a sieve when cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve the peas with butter and pounded sugar.

  2. Remove the mint before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mint + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and supply its sweet, fresh flavour and soft texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel that coats the peas.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the natural flavour of the peas.
Mint
Infuses the cooking water with a fresh, aromatic herbal flavour.

The step that matters

Add the peas once the water is boiling. Peas dropped into rapidly boiling water cook quickly and keep their bright green colour. Adding them to cool water or leaving them too long softens the texture and dulls the colour, because prolonged heat breaks down the green chlorophyll and overcooks the starches.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Mintthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, 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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