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Green Peas

A green pea side dish with lettuce, onion, parsley, ham, flour, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Green Peas

Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell and wash the peas, then place them in cold water to cook.

  2. When nearly done, add salt and cook until tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the peas, reserving a little cooking liquid.

Stew the peas

  1. In a stew pan, combine the peas, lettuce, onion, parsley, and ham.

  2. Cover and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally and adding water if necessary.

  3. Once the peas are tender, remove the ham and onion.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix flour with butter and cream, then stir into the peas.

  2. Simmer gently for 3-4 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and give it its tender, soft texture when cooked.
Lettuce
Breaks down during slow cooking, adding moisture and body to the stewed peas.
Ham
Contributes savory, salty flavor to the cooking liquid as it stews with the peas.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth sauce when stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavor and smoothing the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and butter mixture. Flour mixed with butter and cream should be stirred in evenly and then simmered gently. Added directly to hot liquid, flour clumps; simmering lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, onion, parsley, ham, flour, butter, cream):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, onion, parsley, ham, flour, butter, cream. 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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