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Peas with Cream Sauce

A dish of peas simmered in a butter, flour, and milk sauce seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Peas with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Put the peas in a kettle of salted boiling water and cook for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour to the butter and mix well.

  3. Slowly add the milk while stirring constantly until the mixture boils.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then add the peas.

  5. Keep over boiling water for about 5 minutes before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Peas
Form the bulk of the dish and provide its sweet, tender body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Cooked into the butter, it thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it comes to a boil.

The step that matters

Slowly add the milk while stirring constantly until the mixture boils. Adding milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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