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To Stew Peas

A simple stew of peas cooked with gravy or water, sugar, pepper, salt, and optional butter, egg, lettuce, mint, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Stew Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. If using gravy, bring it to a boil and add the peas, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew until the peas are tender, then thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  3. For a lighter version, use lettuce, mint, and onion with the water from washing the lettuce.

  4. Add pepper, salt, and sugar, and stew gently for 2 hours.

  5. Beat the egg and stir it in with 1 ounce of butter before serving.

  6. Always add peas to boiling liquid and keep boiling until they are floury.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the body of the dish; their starch softens and thickens the liquid as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness, and butter rolled in flour thickens the stewed liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory pepper and salt.
Egg
Beaten in at the end, it enriches the sauce and adds body.

The step that matters

Add peas to boiling liquid and boil until floury. Starting the peas in boiling liquid brings them up to cooking heat quickly. Keeping them boiling lets the starch granules swell and break down, giving the soft, mealy texture the dish depends on.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, sugar, pepper, butter, egg, mint, onion. 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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