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Baked Peas

A simple baked pea dish with butter, salt, sugar, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the peas as for boiling; when half done, pour into a baking pan.

  2. Season with butter, pepper, salt, and sugar.

  3. Slice the piece of bacon and bury it in the middle of the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Cook slowly until thoroughly done and a delicate brown.

  2. Serve hot or cold.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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, becoming tender as they cook through.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the peas brown gently.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat that flavours the peas as it renders during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until thoroughly done and a delicate brown. Low, slow heat cooks the peas through evenly and lets surface sugars and fats brown gently. Too much heat can scorch the butter and bacon before the peas are tender.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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