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To Boil Oreen Peas

A boiled green peas dish flavored with butter, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Boil Oreen Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas just before boiling, wash them, and drain them in a colander.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil plenty of salted water in a saucepan, add the peas, and cook uncovered until tender, about 15 to 25 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas and serve hot with melted butter on top or in a tureen.

Richer version

  1. For a richer dish, combine the peas with butter in a saucepan over low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add boiling water to just cover the peas, a small pinch of salt, and cook quickly for 40 minutes.

  3. Stir in sugar and a mixture of butter and flour, then shake over the heat for a couple of minutes before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young green peas
Form the bulk of the dish and turn soft and tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness, fat, and a smooth coating to the cooked peas.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the grassy flavor of the peas.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture so it clings lightly to the peas.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be kept moving over the heat so it cooks smoothly without lumps. Cooking it in fat thickens the mixture and removes the raw flour taste.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour. 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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