Skip to main content
Main

Green Peas, Parisian Style

A buttery, parsley‑flavored green pea dish cooked with lettuce, green onions, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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, Parisian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Combine the green peas, water, and 6 ounces of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Place the pan over high heat.

  3. Add the parsley, lettuce, and green onions.

  4. Stir occasionally until the peas are cooked.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix the remaining 4 ounces of butter with the flour.

  2. Add the butter-flour mixture to the peas.

  3. Toss the peas until the butter melts.

  4. Cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and a little sugar.

  6. If the mixture becomes too thick, add a little hot water.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 dish and give it its bulk.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the peas a smooth coating.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the peas are coated rather than watery.
Lettuce
Softens as it cooks and adds moisture and a mild sweetness to the peas.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump. Mixing it with butter first coats the flour particles so they disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipes