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Pois Au Lard

A French stew of peas and pork belly simmered with onion and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pois Au Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Remove the skin from the pork belly and cut it into 1 inch pieces.

  2. Blanch the pork in boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain.

Cook

  1. In a 2-liter pot, melt the butter and sauté the pork for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and stir for 4 minutes over heat.

  3. Add the peas and the whole onion, then pour in the water.

  4. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Taste for salt, remove the onion, skim off excess fat, and serve.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pork belly
Provides fat and rich meaty flavour that renders into the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for sautéing the pork and a rounded, savoury richness.
Flour
Toasted in the fat, it thickens the cooking liquid into a looser sauce.
Peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide sweetness and texture.

The step that matters

Skim off excess fat. Pork belly releases a lot of fat as it cooks. Skimming it before serving keeps the dish from tasting greasy and gives the liquid a cleaner, lighter texture.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, flour, onion. 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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