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Chicken with Peas

A chicken dish cooked with peas, butter, flour, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the chicken pieces.

  2. Cut the peas into diagonal pieces.

Cook the chicken

  1. Heat the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chicken and peas to the pan.

  3. Cook for a few minutes.

  4. Mix the flour with the broth.

  5. Pour the mixture over the chicken.

  6. Cover the kettle tightly and place it in the cooker for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  5. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns tender as it cooks slowly in liquid.
Peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, green flavour to the finished dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the chicken brown lightly at the start.
Flour
Starch thickens the broth into a light sauce as it heats.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that moistens and gently cooks the chicken.

The step that matters

Mix the flour fully into the broth. Flour clumps if it meets hot liquid unmixed. Stirring it smoothly into the cold broth first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps as it heats.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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