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Peas with Bacon

A savory dish of peas cooked with bacon, butter, stock, chives, parsley, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,150 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Peas with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the bacon pieces in butter for a few minutes.

  2. In a stewpan, heat the peas with some butter for a few minutes.

  3. Add stock to moisten the peas.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the bacon, chives, and parsley.

  2. Taste and add sugar if too salty.

  3. Remove the chives and 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. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + chivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together227 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + chivetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide their own natural sweetness.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and fat, and browns in the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when frying the bacon and warming the peas.
Stock
Adds moisture so the peas stay tender and coat evenly.
Chives
Add a mild oniony aroma and freshness.

The step that matters

Taste and add sugar if too salty. Bacon and stock both contribute salt, and salt is easy to overdo once they combine. Tasting before seasoning lets the cook check the balance. A small amount of sugar can soften the perception of saltiness and round out the flavour of the peas.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chive, parsley, 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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