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Creamed Peas

A dish of boiled peas thickened with a cream and flour mixture.

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

Creamed Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Shell the peas and add them to boiling water to barely cover.

  2. Boil with the cover on for 20 minutes or until tender, adding salt and pepper halfway through.

Finish the sauce

  1. Blend the flour with the milk until creamy, then pour slowly into the peas while stirring continuously.

  2. Cook for 1 minute, then remove from heat.

  3. Add the cream and butter, stirring until melted, and serve immediately.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, coating sauce around the peas.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a glossy finish and rounded flavour to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Pouring the flour mixture into the peas. Pour slowly while stirring constantly so the starch disperses evenly. Adding it all at once can leave lumps, because flour clumps when it hits hot liquid before its starch can separate.

Swap the peas

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

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

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