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Stewed Peas

A simple dish of peas simmered with water, sugar, cream, and butter.

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

Stewed Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pea pods and shell them.

Cook the peas

  1. In a granite saucepan, bring 1 pint of water to a boil for each quart of peas.

  2. Boil the pods for 10 minutes, then remove them.

  3. Add the peas and sugar to the water, cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes until tender.

  4. Season with salt and pepper just before removing from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream and butter, then 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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

Fresh peas
Form the main body of the dish and become tender and sweet as they simmer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory seasoning and the flavor of the peas.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and the flour coating helps thicken the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the peas until tender. Simmering gently with the lid on keeps the peas moist and cooks the starch until tender. Too hard a boil can toughen skins and break peas apart, while undercooking leaves them starchy and firm.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, cream, 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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