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To Stew Peas with Eggs

A stew of peas cooked with eggs, onions, and mint, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Stew Peas with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat oil or butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add sliced onion, salt, and pepper; fry until soft.

  3. Wash and drain peas, then add to the saucepan.

  4. Pour in boiling water, add sugar and chopped mint.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook until peas are tender.

  2. Break eggs into a cup, then gently place on top of the peas.

  3. Cover and cook until eggs are set.

  4. Serve carefully.

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. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft structure on top of the peas, giving the dish its body.
Peas
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender as they simmer in the liquid.
Onion
Softens in the fat and adds savory sweetness to the base.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until eggs are set. Eggs cook through gently under cover, where trapped steam sets the whites and yolks evenly. Cooking too hard or too long can make the eggs rubbery and dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, peas, sugar, mint, egg. 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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