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Peas in Boxes

Bread cubes filled with a pea and milk mixture, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peas in Boxes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the boxes

  1. Cut stale bread into 2-inch cubes to make boxes.

  2. Brush the inside and outside of the bread boxes with melted butter.

  3. Brown the boxes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the filling

  1. Drain the can of peas and place the peas in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 cup of milk thickened with 1 tablespoon each of butter and flour rubbed together.

  3. Stir the mixture gently, not around.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

Serve

  1. Fill the bread boxes with the pea mixture and serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Stale bread
Dry, sturdy structure that holds its shape as a container for the filling.
Peas
Forms the bulk of the filling, adding body and a mild sweetness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that becomes a creamy sauce when thickened.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a sauce that binds the peas together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and coats the bread to help it brown.

The step that matters

Add the milk thickened with butter and flour. Flour thickens the milk only when its starch is evenly dispersed and heated, so lumps form if it is not blended smoothly first. Stirring gently keeps the peas whole while the sauce thickens.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, flour. 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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