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Green Peas a LA Cecile

A dish of fresh peas cooked with mint, sugar, salt, butter, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Peas a LA Cecile

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas and place them in a bowl covered with a lid.

  2. Wash the pods and slice them into shreds.

Make the pod broth

  1. In a stewpan, combine the sliced pods, mint, and enough hot water to cover them.

  2. Add the sugar and salt.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the liquid away from the pods.

  5. Bring the strained liquid to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the peas and boil quickly.

  2. Make a roux with the butter and flour.

  3. Mix the roux with the boiled peas and liquid.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and an additional ounce of butter.

  5. Serve.

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 + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 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

Fresh young peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the peas.

The step that matters

Make the roux and combine it with the liquid. Flour must be cooked briefly in butter before liquid is added, so it thickens smoothly without a raw, floury taste or lumps.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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