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Green Peas with Cream, Sharon Style

A creamy green pea dish flavored with lettuce, thyme, and a custard of cream and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Green Peas with Cream, Sharon Style

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Combine peas, cold water, butter, lettuce, and thyme in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and cook over medium heat, tossing occasionally.

  3. Once cooked, remove the lettuce and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the cream with the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Off the heat, combine the cream mixture with the peas and toss well.

  3. Serve with small pieces of toasted bread around the dish.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lettuce + thymetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 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

Fresh young peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavor of the dish.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the peas.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture gently and help bind it to the peas.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor while the peas cook.

The step that matters

Off the heat, combine the cream mixture with the peas. Egg yolks thicken when heated and can scramble or curdle if they get too hot. Adding the cream mixture off the heat and tossing well lets the residual warmth thicken it smoothly.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lettuce, thyme, pepper, sugar, cream, 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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