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To Cook Peas with Lettuce

A cooked pea and lettuce dish flavored with butter, egg, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

To Cook Peas with Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outside leaves of the lettuce and cut the remainder into ribbons.

Cook the stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the peas, onion, lettuce, and stock or water.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Cover and cook slowly until the peas are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg and stir in the cream.

  2. Once the peas are cooked, add the egg mixture, remove the onion, 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.

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

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

  2. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

Peas
Form the main body of the stew and become tender through slow cooking.
Lettuce
Wilts into the stew, adding soft texture and a mild, sweet, vegetal flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Egg
Thickens the stew as it gently sets, giving it a creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the flavor and texture of the finished stew.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg thickens by setting when heated. If the stew is boiling hard when the egg and cream go in, the egg can curdle and turn grainy. Add it off the heat or at a gentle simmer, and serve right away.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, lettuce, pepper, butter, egg, 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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