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Salad

Green Pea Salad

A salad of cold boiled peas, powdered sugar, oil, vinegar, and sliced cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Pea Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the cold boiled peas in a bowl.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and mix well.

  3. Pour over the oil and vinegar.

  4. Garnish with the delicately sliced cucumbers.

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 + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Peas + vinegartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cucumbertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Forms the bulk of the salad and carries the dressing.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Oil
Adds fat that coats the peas and softens the sharp vinegar taste.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the peas.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cucumber):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cucumber. 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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