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Green Peas

A side dish of boiled green peas served with mint butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Green Peas

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 ↓

Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the peas

  1. Tie the lettuce and onion into a small bunch.

  2. Boil the peas with the bunch, salt, and sugar in plenty of water.

  3. Strain the water and remove the bunch.

Finish with mint butter

  1. Mix the cold butter with the minced mint and place on a dish.

  2. Turn the peas over the mint butter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the bulk of the dish, cooking to a tender texture while the water carries their flavour.
Cold butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating when the hot peas are turned over it.
Lettuce
Flavours the cooking water with a mild, sweet, vegetal note, then is removed.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the cooking water, then is removed with the lettuce.
Pounded sugar
Rounds out the flavour of the peas with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Turning the peas over the mint butter. The peas should be hot and drained so the cold butter softens and coats them rather than pooling. Excess water would dilute the butter and dull the mint's aroma.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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