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Stewed Green Peas

A simple dish of green peas simmered with butter, flour, and optional savory herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Stewed Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil.

  2. Add the green peas and cook until tender.

  3. Drain the peas in a colander and set aside.

Make the sauce and combine

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

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the peas back to the saucepan and mix well.

  4. For a variation, sauté sweet young pods in butter with savory herbs.

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

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

  3. 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

Young green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, fresh flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the peas a smooth coating.
Flour
Thickens the butter and coating so the peas are held in a light, stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Stirring the flour into melted butter and cooking it for a few minutes cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken evenly. Skipping or rushing this step can leave a pasty flavor and lumps when the peas are added.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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