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Green Peas and New Potatoes

A simple side dish of green peas and new potatoes cooked in sweet cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Green Peas and New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the green peas and new potatoes in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the vegetables and pour the sweet cream over them.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter and heat until steaming hot.

  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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 sweet, fresh flavor of the dish.
New potatoes
Add starchy bulk and a soft, tender texture that soaks up the cream.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, forming the creamy sauce around the vegetables.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth finish to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Heat until steaming hot. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard after being added. Gentle heating keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cream, butter. 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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