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Green Peas

A simple side dish of green peas cooked with butter, flour, broth, sugar, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Green Peas

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the green peas and cook until they release their juice.

  3. Sprinkle in the fine meal and moisten with the rich broth.

  4. Add sugar and salt to taste, and let the mixture stew well.

  5. Before serving, stir in the milk and cook for a moment.

  6. Serve alongside roast fowl.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Green peas
Provide the main body and flavor of the dish, releasing juice as they cook.
Fine meal
Absorbs the liquid and thickens the mixture into a soft, cohesive texture.
Rich broth
Moistens the mixture and adds savory depth while the peas stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives a smooth mouthfeel.
Milk
Stirred in at the end to add creaminess and soften the texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stew well. Slow stewing lets the peas soften and the meal fully hydrate and thicken; stopping early leaves the texture grainy and the liquid thin.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk. 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.

More green peas recipes

Boiled 92Stewed 36Preserved 26Creamed 22Soup 14French 13 See all 150 →

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