Skip to main content
Main

Peas, Fricassee of

A savory pea dish simmered with butter, flour, stock, pepper, sugar, and chopped ham, garnished with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peas, Fricassee of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the flour and mix well without discolouring.

  3. Pour in the boiling white stock and add pepper and sugar. Simmer for five minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the peas and shake well to warm thoroughly.

  2. Stir in the chopped ham, tongue, or bacon.

  3. Garnish with croutons and 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + peastop 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

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour when melted into the stewpan.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Peas
Provide the main vegetable body and sweet, fresh flavour of the dish.
Boiled ham, tongue, or bacon
Adds salty, savoury meat flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour without discolouring. Cooking flour in melted butter forms a roux that thickens the sauce. If it browns too far, the colour and flavour change, so it should be mixed well over gentle heat until smooth.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar, ham. 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 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes