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Green Peas

A simple green peas dish cooked with water, sweet milk, flour, salt, and cream or butter.

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

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas and place them in boiling, slightly salted water, using 1 cup of water for every 4 cups of peas.

Cook

  1. Cover and cook slowly until tender, about 30 minutes for fresh peas.

  2. Once cooked, pour in the sweet milk and heat to boiling.

Finish

  1. Thicken the mixture with a little flour.

  2. Season with salt and add cream or butter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and become tender during slow cooking.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the liquid as it heats to boiling.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smoother, more coating consistency.
Cream or butter
Adds fat for a silkier texture and rounder flavor at the end.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour after boiling. Flour needs to be stirred in smoothly and simmered so its starch swells and thickens the liquid; added in lumps or without enough heat, it leaves a pasty texture.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, cream. 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.

More green peas recipes

Boiled 92Stewed 36Preserved 26Creamed 22Soup 14French 13 See all 150 →

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