A little girl and her mother have no food and no money. An old woman gives the little girl a magic cooking pot, and tells her the magic words. One day the little girl's out for a long time and the mother wants some porridge. She can tell the pot to cook, but she can't make it stop. She doesn't know the right words.

A prince travels the world to find a suitable princess to marry - but none of the girls he meets seems right, and he cannot be sure any is a real princess. And so he returns home sadly. But then one stormy night there is a knock at the door and in comes a girl dressed in rags. She claims she is Princess Phoebe, looking for a prince she can marry. The prince is soon fascinated by her, so the queen devises a plan - she will place a single pea underneath the many mattresses on Phoebe's bed. In the morning, Phoebe complains of not having slept a wink. The queen is overjoyed - if the girl has felt the pea under all those layers she must be a real princess!