Skip to main content
Main

Dried Peas

A cooked dried pea dish seasoned with salt, beef drippings, and topped with onion gravy, optionally served with sauerkraut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dried Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Soak the dried peas overnight in water.

  2. Cook the peas in fresh water until tender, similar to white dried beans.

  3. Pass the cooked peas through a sieve.

Season and serve

  1. Season the peas with coarse sea salt and beef drippings.

  2. In a skillet, brown the chopped onion in butter.

  3. Pour the browned onion gravy over the seasoned peas before serving.

  4. Serve the peas thickened, optionally with sauerkraut.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  3. Peas + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,044 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried peas
Their starch thickens as they cook and gives the sieved purée its body.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and helps it brown in the skillet.
Onion
Browning develops sweetness and savoury aroma for the gravy.
Beef drippings
Adds fat and savoury meaty flavour that carries through the peas.

The step that matters

Cook the peas until fully tender before sieving. Starch in peas only gelatinises fully when cooked long enough, so undercooked peas stay grainy and will not pass through a sieve into a smooth, thickened purée.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes