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Peas

Boiled green peas flavored with sage and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and sage work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

  2. Add the green peas and the sprig of sage.

  3. Cook gently until the peas are tender, avoiding rapid boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the fresh butter just 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 + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its tender, slightly sweet texture.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the peas.
Sage
Contributes a savory, herbal aroma that flavors the cooking water and peas.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the peas are tender. Rapid boiling agitates the peas and can split their skins and break them down, leaving a mushy texture. A gentle simmer cooks them evenly while they stay whole and tender.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Mintfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter. 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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