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Green Peas, Spanish Sauce

A green pea sauce with Spanish flavor, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Peas, Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Steam the peas with butter, parsley, and minced onion until tender.

  2. Add stock, chopped tomato, and sugar.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Thicken with well-beaten egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Serve on buttered toast.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  3. Peas + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

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

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 sauce and give it its bulk and flavor.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps carry flavor from the herbs and onion.
Tomato
Adds acidity and a fresh, savory note that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the tomato's acidity.

The step that matters

Thicken with well-beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they are added, they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir them in off the heat or over low heat, and keep stirring while they thicken.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, butter, tomato, parsley, sugar, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, tomato, parsley, sugar, egg. 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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