Skip to main content
Main

Peas Stewed Ik Cream

A creamy stew of young green peas cooked with butter, flour, cream, and a touch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peas Stewed Ik Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Boil the peas in a saucepan of water until tender.

  2. Drain the peas in a colander and let them dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a clean saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour until smooth, without browning it.

  3. Stir in the cream and add the sugar, bringing it to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the peas and stir until heated through, about 2 minutes.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young green peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its fresh, vegetable flavour.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety body.
White sugar
Adds a light sweetness that balances the cream and peas.

The step that matters

Whisk in the flour until smooth, without browning it. Flour must be cooked in the butter until it is smooth and free of lumps, but not browned, so the roux thickens the cream evenly and keeps a clean, mild flavour. Browning changes the colour and taste of a white sauce.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes