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Green Peas

A sautéed green pea side dish with butter, parsley, onions, flour, water, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Green Peas

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 ↓

Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and drain the green peas thoroughly.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the fresh butter and add the peas, parsley, and green onions.

  3. Toss the peas in the butter, then sprinkle with flour.

Cook

  1. Add boiling water to just cover the peas and let boil for 15 minutes until the sauce is reduced.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then remove from heat.

  3. Add the walnut-sized butter and sugar, tossing gently until melted.

Serve

  1. Warm the serving dish and serve immediately.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the buttery sauce as it cooks.
Fresh butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the peas and herbs.
All-purpose flour
Dusted over the coated peas, it thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury butter and pepper.
Green onions
Contribute a mild, fresh onion aroma to the buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce after boiling. Boiling just enough water to cover the peas and reducing it lets the flour thicken the liquid into a sauce rather than a watery broth. Stopping too early leaves the peas swimming in thin liquid, while over-reducing can make the sauce stick and scorch.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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

More green peas recipes

Boiled 92Stewed 36Preserved 26Creamed 22Soup 14French 13 See all 150 →

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