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Peas with Cream Sauce

A simple dish of peas simmered in a butter‑flour‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peas with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Boil salted water in a kettle and add the peas. Cook for 15 minutes, then drain.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour to create a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until it boils.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the salt, pepper, and drained peas. Stir to combine.

  2. Place the mixture over boiling water for 5 minutes 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Peas
Form the bulk of the dish and give its sweet, green, vegetable flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and then the milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, adding body and mild richness.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually while stirring. Flour starch must be evenly dispersed in the hot fat and liquid. Adding the milk slowly while stirring constantly lets each starch granule hydrate and swell smoothly, preventing lumps and giving a silky sauce.

Swap the peas

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

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

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