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Greex Peas, with Bacon

A stew of peas and bacon cooked with butter, broth, water, onions, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Greex Peas, with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the peas

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the diced bacon and fry for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the peas, broth, and water.

  4. Season with parsley, thyme, bay leaf, onions, salt, and pepper.

  5. Boil for about 40 minutes, then discard the seasonings.

Serve

  1. Serve the peas and bacon together.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Bacon
Renders fat that flavours the butter and adds savoury, salty depth to the peas.
Peas
Form the bulk of the dish, softening during the long simmer into a tender, cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour from the bacon and aromatics.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma as they simmer in the broth.

The step that matters

Boil for about 40 minutes. Peas need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully; too short leaves them firm and starchy, while a hard rolling boil can break them down and turn them dull and mushy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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