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To Stew Peas

A simple stew of peas cooked in strong gravy with sugar, pepper, and salt.

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 ↓

To Stew Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the strong gravy and peas in a pot.

  2. Add sugar, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew gently until the peas are tender.

  4. If the gravy needs thickening, add butter rolled in flour.

  5. For old peas, half boil them first in hard water.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender bulk as they stew.
Strong gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory flavor in which the peas stew.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the gravy, since flour starch swells when heated and enriches its body.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the savory gravy.

The step that matters

Half boiling old peas in hard water. Older dried peas have tougher skins and firmer starch, so they need a pre-boil to soften before stewing. Hard water contains minerals that can slow softening, so the peas may stay firm if the step is rushed or skipped.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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