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Green Peas in Cream

A simple side dish of boiled green peas simmered in sweet cream, butter, salt, pepper, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the boiled green peas in sweet cream for 10 minutes.

  2. Season with butter, salt, and white pepper.

  3. If the peas are off in flavor, add sugar to improve them.

  4. Serve in a deep vegetable dish.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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. Cream + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the bulk of the dish and give it its body and vegetable flavor.
Sweet cream
Simmered with the peas to add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Simmering the peas in cream. Simmering for the full time lets the peas soften and absorb the cream, giving a smooth, cohesive texture. Too little time leaves the dish grainy or thin, and a hard boil can cause the cream to scorch or separate.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, cream, butter, sugar. 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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