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French Peas

A creamy dish of French peas cooked with butter, flour, stock, milk, sugar, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the French peas and browned onion.

  2. Add the butter and flour, stirring to combine.

  3. Slowly add the stock, then the milk or cream.

  4. Stir in the powdered sugar and egg yolk.

Finish and serve

  1. Cook for 5 minutes and serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, smooth flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock and milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce gently as it heats.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Rich milk or cream
Adds moisture and body, giving the sauce a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk gently over moderate heat. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it gets too hot or is added to a boiling mixture. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring constantly lets it thicken the sauce smoothly without turning grainy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, sugar, egg. 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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