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Green Peas Stewed

Stewed green peas with lettuce, onion, butter, pepper, salt, optional egg, mint, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Peas Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the peas

  1. Combine the peas, lettuce, and sliced onion in a stewpan, without adding water.

  2. Add the butter, pepper, and salt, then stew gently for two hours.

Finish

  1. Beat an egg and stir it in, if desired.

  2. Add a lump of butter, if desired.

  3. Chop fresh mint and stir it in with some good gravy, if available.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, stewed texture.
Lettuce
Adds moisture and body as it wilts into the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smooth, rounded flavour.
Egg
Thickens the stew slightly when beaten in and gently heated.

The step that matters

Stew gently for two hours without added water. The peas and lettuce release their own moisture, so the pan must stay covered and at a gentle heat. Too much heat can scorch the bottom before the vegetables soften.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, lettuce, onion, orange, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, onion, orange, butter, pepper, egg. 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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