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To Boil Vegetables Green

A simple boiled green vegetable dish seasoned with salt, butter, sugar, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

To Boil Vegetables Green

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Clean vegetables thoroughly and wash them.

  2. Boil plenty of water in a pot.

Boil and bottle

  1. Add vegetables to boiling water and boil quickly without covering.

  2. Remove vegetables when they begin to sink to avoid losing color.

  3. For green peas, shell them and add to boiling water for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Drain peas in a colander and let them dry on a cloth.

  5. Bottle peas with clarified mutton suet, leaving space for cork.

Serve

  1. When ready to use, boil peas with butter, sugar, and mint until tender.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + minttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + minttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the peas as they finish cooking.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness that balances the savoury vegetables.
Fresh mint
Adds a fresh aroma and flavour to the finished peas.

The step that matters

Removing the vegetables as they begin to sink. Green vegetables keep their bright colour only for a short boil. Overcooking breaks down the green chlorophyll pigment, so the vegetables turn dull olive. Lifting them as soon as they start to sink stops the cooking at the right point.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe 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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