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Canned Peas

A simple side dish of canned peas cooked with butter and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Canned Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Drain the peas in a sieve and rinse with cold water.

  2. Let them stand for 30 minutes to aerate.

Heat and season

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the peas to the melted butter and heat slowly.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt.

  4. Heat one or two lettuce leaves in the butter until water is extracted.

  5. Remove the leaves, then add the peas to heat.

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

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

  3. Butter + lettucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,287 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Make up the bulk of the dish and provide its main body and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel, and carries the flavor of the dish.

The step that matters

Heat the peas slowly over low heat. Butter can brown and turn bitter at high heat, while gentle heating warms the already-cooked peas evenly without toughening or drying them.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Lettucethe 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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