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Stewed Peas, Francaise

A stew of cooked peas thickened with butter, flour, and liquid meat glaze, sweetened with caster sugar and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Peas, Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the peas

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cooked peas.

  2. Add the liquid meat glaze and stir until combined.

  3. Mix the butter with the flour until smooth, then add to the peas.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a serving dish, dust with caster sugar, and sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Cooked peas
Form the bulk of the dish and provide its main body and flavor.
Liquid meat glaze
Adds savory, concentrated meaty flavor to the peas.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the peas a smooth, stewed body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the thickened peas.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens. Flour needs to be heated while stirring so its starch swells and thickens the liquid evenly. Adding the flour mixture without stirring can leave lumps, and stopping too early leaves the stew thin.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, sugar, parsley. 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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