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Boiled Pork and Pease Pudding

A traditional British dish of boiled pork served with a split pea pudding and vegetable accompaniment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Pork and Pease Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the split peas for about 12 hours.

  2. Place the pork in a large pot and cover it with warm water, or cold if very salty.

  3. Bring the pot to a boil. Skim off any foam.

  4. Boil the pork for about 10 minutes.

  5. Add the onion, carrot, turnip, and celery, all cut into thick slices, along with the peppercorns.

  6. Simmer gently until the pork is cooked through.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the parsnips separately.

  2. Boil the cabbage separately, cutting it into 4 pieces and pressing it well.

  3. Season the cabbage with pepper.

  4. Cut the cabbage into small squares.

Make the pease pudding

  1. Drain the soaked peas.

  2. Tie the peas in a cloth.

  3. Cook the peas in the boiling pot with the pork for about 1½ hours.

  4. Rub the cooked peas through a fine sieve.

  5. Mix the sieved peas with butter and yolks.

  6. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  7. Return the mixture to the cloth.

  8. Boil the mixture with the pork for an additional 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the pork in a hot dish, garnished with the parsnips and cabbage.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down into a smooth, thick pudding when cooked and sieved, giving the dish its body.
Egg yolks
Bind the sieved peas so the pudding holds together when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the pease pudding.
Salted pork
Flavours the cooking liquid and the dish with savoury, salty richness.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked peas through a fine sieve. Cooked split peas must be pushed through a fine sieve to break them into a smooth purée. Leftover lumps or skins make the pudding grainy and uneven in texture.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, cabbage, parsnip, onion, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, cabbage, parsnip, onion, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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