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Green Peas with Bacon

A stew of green peas, bacon, onions, parsley, brown sauce, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Green Peas with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine the peas, brown sauce, brown gravy, sugar, button onions, and parsley.

  2. Boil for about 10 minutes.

  3. Braise the bacon, cut it into ¼-inch dice, and add it to the peas.

  4. Remove the onions and parsley, then season with butter and sugar. Mix well and stew for 20 minutes before serving.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and carry the sauce and bacon flavour.
Brown sauce
Provides the liquid and savoury, deeply coloured body for the peas to simmer in.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky flavour and fat that enriches the peas as they stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the sauce when stirred in at the end.
Sugar
Balances savoury notes with a touch of sweetness, rounding out the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the peas after seasoning. Peas are already cooked, so over-long simmering can make them soft and dull in colour, while too little time leaves the sauce and bacon flavours unmelded. Stir gently to keep the peas whole.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, sugar, onion, parsley, 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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