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Small Green Peas

A simple dish of small green peas sautéed with butter, parsley, green onions, and starch, then boiled until the sauce reduces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Small Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the peas.

Cook

  1. In a casserole, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the peas, parsley, and green onions; sauté for a few minutes.

  3. Sprinkle the peas with starch to coat them lightly.

  4. Add boiling water to the casserole and boil for 15 minutes until the sauce reduces.

  5. Season with salt and pepper 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 provide its fresh, sweet flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives the dish a smooth mouthfeel.
Starch
Coats the peas and thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Green onions
Add mild aromatic onion flavor during the initial sauté.

The step that matters

Adding the starch. Starch must be sprinkled evenly over the peas before the liquid is added so it disperses without clumping. Starch thickens only when heated in liquid, so the sauce will thin or turn lumpy if it is poorly distributed.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, onion, pepper. 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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