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Ragout of Peas

A stew of green peas with turnips, carrots, flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ragout of Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peas overnight.

Cook

  1. Boil the peas in the same water they were soaked in.

  2. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Mix the flour with the butter in a pan and cook until the vegetables are tender.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  5. Peas + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry green peas
Form the bulk of the ragout and give it a hearty, starchy body as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the ragout becomes a lightly thick, cohesive mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, helping the flour blend smoothly.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and colour as they soften during cooking.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery flavour that balances the sweetness of the carrots.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with the butter. Flour must be stirred evenly into the butter and cooked for a while so it thickens smoothly and loses its raw, pasty taste. Adding it unevenly or too quickly can leave lumps or a floury flavour.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, flour, butter, pepper. 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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