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Green Peas, Family Style

A buttery, flour-thickened green peas dish finished with 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: 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. Stir in the flour and cook slowly until lightly colored.

Cook the peas

  1. Add the peas and boiling water, then season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Add the parsley and lettuce.

  3. Cook until the peas are tender, then remove the parsley and lettuce.

Finish with cream

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream with the egg yolks.

  2. Stir the cream mixture into 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
Enriches the base and carries flavor while the flour is cooked into it.
Flour
Thickens the butter and peas into a creamy sauce once cooked.
Peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its sweet, fresh flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.
Egg yolks
Help thicken and enrich the cream when stirred into the peas.

The step that matters

Stir the cream mixture into the peas without cooking further. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if they get too hot. Adding them off the heat or with the pan barely warm, and not boiling again, keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

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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