Skip to main content
Main

Peas in Cream

A simple dish of cooked peas simmered in butter, cream, and rice flour, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter 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 in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a chafing dish, combine the butter, cream, and rice flour.

  2. Heat until boiling.

  3. Add the cooked peas, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir carefully until very 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the peas a smooth, creamy coating.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor and helps create a silky sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, so the sauce clings to the peas.
Cooked peas
Form the main body of the dish and are coated by the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Heat until boiling, then stir carefully. Rice flour thickens the cream only when it reaches a boil, so the sauce must be brought fully to the boil before the peas go in. Stirring carefully keeps the peas whole and prevents the thickened sauce from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, pepper, butter, rice, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes