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Preserve

To Keep Green Peas Till Christmas

A method for preserving fresh green peas for use at Christmas by drying and storing them in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Keep Green Peas Till Christmas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Choose very fine, young, and fresh green peas.

  2. Shell the peas.

  3. Boil the peas in salted water for 5-6 minutes.

  4. Drain the peas in a colander.

  5. Spread the peas on a cloth to dry.

Preserve

  1. Fill bottles with the dried peas.

  2. Cover the bottles with fried lard.

  3. Cork the bottles tightly.

  4. Tie a bladder over the bottles.

  5. Store the bottles in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Boil water with a little salt, sugar, and butter.

  2. Drain the peas.

  3. Toss the peas in a saucepan with butter until melted.

  4. Serve the peas in a 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 + 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

Fresh green peas
The main ingredient, whose freshness and youth set the flavour and texture of the preserved peas.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating to the peas when tossed at serving.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury peas.

The step that matters

Spread the peas on a cloth to dry. Any surface moisture left on the peas dilutes the seal and encourages spoilage once they are covered with fat in the bottles, so they must be fully dry before filling.

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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