Name: Paos Peas with Bacon
Ingredients: 2 cups fresh peas; 4 slices bacon; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper

Why it works: Peas and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,331 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Paos Peas with Bacon

Ingredients

2 cups fresh peas
4 slices bacon
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the bacon

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium heat until crispy.
Remove the bacon and crumble it into pieces.

Cook the peas

In the bacon fat, add the peas and sauté for 5 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the crumbled bacon.
Serve warm.

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.

Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,331 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

Fresh peas: Provide the main vegetable body and sweet, tender texture when sautéed.
Bacon: Adds savory, salty flavor and smoky aroma, and its fat is used to cook the peas.

“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.