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French Peas

A creamy side dish of French peas with onion, butter, flour, stock, milk, powdered sugar, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the French peas and browned onion.

  2. Add the butter and flour, stirring to combine.

  3. Slowly add the stock while stirring.

  4. Mix in the milk or cream, powdered sugar, and egg yolk.

Finish and serve

  1. Cook for 5 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavor.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's flavor.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce as it heats, adding body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it is exposed to high heat too quickly. Keeping the sauce warm rather than boiling helps it thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, flour, milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, flour, milk, sugar, egg. 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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