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Poulets Aux Petits Pois

A stew of chicken pieces, green peas, butter, parsley, onions, and a sauce of broth and gravy, seasoned with salt and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Poulets Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a stew-pan, combine chicken pieces, green peas, butter, parsley, and onions.

  2. Heat on the stove for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Add flour and moisten with equal parts broth and gravy.

  4. Stew slowly until chicken is tender and sauce is reduced.

Season and serve

  1. Before serving, season with salt and sugar.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during slow stewing.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft texture to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking base.
Flour
Thickens the broth and gravy into a sauce.
Broth
Supplies liquid that cooks the chicken and forms the sauce.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and aroma as they soften in the stew.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until chicken is tender and sauce is reduced. Slow, gentle simmering lets collagen in the chicken break down into tender meat, while the liquid reduces and thickens into a sauce. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and leave the sauce thin or unevenly thickened.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, parsley, onion, flour, sugar. 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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