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Preserved Green Peas

A simple dish of preserved green peas cooked in a butter and flour sauce, seasoned with salt, sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Preserved Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour the preserved peas into a colander to drain off the juice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Add broth or water to the butter-flour mixture and boil until thickened.

  3. Season the sauce with salt, sugar, and chopped parsley. Stir the sauce until hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the peas. Shake the pan over the heat until the peas are heated through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce that coats the peas.
Preserved peas
Provide the main body and sweet, earthy flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Boil the butter-flour mixture until thickened. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce; stopping early leaves a thin sauce with a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the peas

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

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

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