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Boiled Peas with Bacon

A simple dish of peas boiled with bacon, seasoned with pepper, salt, and butter.

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

Boiled Peas with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the peas in cold water.

  2. Place the peas in an iron pot or stew-pan and cover with cold water.

Cook

  1. Add the piece of fat bacon and boil slowly until the peas are tender.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt if needed.

  3. Simmer slowly until ready to serve.

Finish

  1. Add a small piece of butter for extra flavor.

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 + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Peas
Form the main body of the dish, and their starch thickens the cooking liquid as they soften.
Bacon
Releases fat and smoky, savory flavor into the cooking water around the peas.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished peas.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until tender. A gentle simmer softens the peas evenly while keeping them whole. A hard, rapid boil breaks their skins and turns them mushy, and stopping too early leaves them starchy and firm.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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.

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