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Petits-pois

A simple dish of boiled peas finished with butter, cream, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Petits-pois

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Shell the peas and select the youngest ones.

  2. Soak the peas in cold water.

Cook the peas

  1. Boil the peas in a kettle of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the water and return it to the kettle, bringing it to a boil.

  3. Add the drained peas to the boiling water without covering the pot.

  4. Boil for 20 to 30 minutes until the peas are tender.

  5. Remove from heat as soon as they are tender.

  6. Drain all but ½ cup of the liquid.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter, salt, pepper, sugar, and cream to the peas.

  2. If desired, stir in a pinch of flour and boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture over the peas and serve.

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 + creamtop 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

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and become tender through boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the peas.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the flavour of the peas.
Flour
Optionally thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat as soon as the peas are tender. Peas keep cooking in their own heat and overcook quickly, turning mushy and dull in colour. Pulling them off the heat at the first sign of tenderness keeps their texture and bright green colour.

Swap the peas

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

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

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