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Boiled Peas

A simple boiled pea dish with lettuce, onion, butter, pepper, salt, optional egg, flour, sugar, and mint garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Boiled Peas

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the peas, lettuce, onion, butter, pepper, and salt in a pot.

  2. Add just enough water to cover the vegetables.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. If desired, beat the egg and stir it in before serving, or add flour and butter.

  5. For extra flavor, add a teaspoon of sugar and garnish with chopped mint.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 main body of the dish and provide most of its sweet, vegetal flavor.
Lettuce
Softens during slow stewing and adds moisture and body to the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the stewed vegetables a rounder mouthfeel.
Egg
Stirred in at the end to thicken and enrich the liquid slightly.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when added with butter.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 hours. Gentle heat keeps the peas and lettuce tender without breaking them down unevenly or scorching on the bottom of the pot. Too much heat can toughen or scorch the vegetables.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, butter, pepper, egg, flour, 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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