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Stewed Peas

A stew of green peas, butter, herbs, and a touch of sugar, thickened with flour and finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the peas

  1. Combine green peas, butter, parsley, lettuce, mint, sugar, salt, pepper, and a little water in a stew-pan. Stir well.

  2. Cook gently over low heat for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  3. Remove the parsley.

  4. Add flour rolled in butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the egg yolks just before serving.

  2. Optionally, tie the lettuce with parsley and onions. Remove the tied lettuce before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender stew as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the stewing liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes creamy rather than watery.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the stew gently when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks just before serving. Egg yolks thicken when heated and can scramble or curdle if they boil. Adding them at the end, with the stew off direct heat, gives a smooth, lightly thickened result.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, parsley, lettuce, sugar, pepper, 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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