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Peas Stewed in Cream

A simple dish of young green peas stewed in butter, flour, cream, and a touch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peas Stewed in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Put the peas into a saucepan of boiling water and cook until tender.

  2. Drain the peas in a colander until dry.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a clean stew pan.

  2. Whisk in the flour until smooth and cook over low heat without browning.

  3. Mix in the cream and add the sugar, bringing to a boil.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the peas and stir for 2 minutes until heated through.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Young green peas
Form the main body of the dish and carry its fresh, sweet flavour.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce that coats the peas.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce its creamy texture.
White sugar
Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Cook the roux without browning. Flour cooked over low heat only until smooth loses its raw taste and thickens well; browning changes its colour and flavour and can leave the sauce speckled or tasting toasted, so keep the heat low and stir steadily.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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.

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