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Green Peas, Family Style

A creamy green pea dish cooked with butter, flour, water, and finished with cream, egg yolks, parsley, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Peas, Family Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and mix well, stirring with a wooden spoon until lightly colored.

Cook the peas

  1. Add the peas and after 2-3 minutes, pour in the boiling water.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then add the parsley and lettuce.

  3. Once the peas are cooked, remove the parsley and lettuce.

Finish with cream

  1. In a bowl, dilute the egg yolks in the cream, then toss with the peas without cooking further.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that carries flavor and gives the base a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cooking liquid into a light, cohesive sauce.
Peas
Main vegetable that gives the dish its body, color and sweet flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich the cream and thicken the sauce gently when tossed with warm peas.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished peas a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Toss the egg yolk and cream mixture with the peas without cooking further. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if they are cooked too long or too hot they can curdle or turn grainy. Tossing them into warm peas off the heat lets them thicken gently into a smooth coating.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar, parsley, lettuce, cream. 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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