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French Peas

A quick side dish of canned French peas cooked with butter, stock or water, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the can of French peas in a colander and rinse with cold water.

  2. Place the peas in a large-bottomed stew pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add butter, stock or water, salt, and sugar.

  2. Cook uncovered until the peas absorb all the liquid.

  3. 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. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

French peas
Form the main body of the dish, providing the substance that the cooking liquid and seasoning are absorbed into.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives the peas a richer mouthfeel and a smoother, glossier finish.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savory salt and rounds out the flavor of the peas.

The step that matters

Cook uncovered until the peas absorb all the liquid. Cooking uncovered lets water evaporate, so the liquid reduces and concentrates the flavor. Covering the pan would trap steam and leave the peas wet, while over-reducing can dry them out and make them stick or scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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