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Old Peas

A stew of old peas cooked with butter, onion, mint, parsley, and seasoned with salt, pepper, sugar, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Old Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the peas

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion, mint, parsley, and salt; cook until the onions are pale.

  3. Add the peas and enough broth to just float them; simmer until the peas are tender.

  4. Strain the mixture, reserving the liquid, and spread the peas on a dish, removing the onion pieces.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the reserved liquid with flour and sugar, then add the peas back in; stir well.

  2. Heat the mixture until steaming and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Mint + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,198 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,372 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Old peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its starchy, tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the reserved cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the peas.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while softening the onion and herbs.
Bombay onion
Adds savoury aromatic flavour as it cooks down pale and sweet.
Cream or good milk
Adds fat and smoothness to the thickened liquid, softening its texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the reserved liquid with flour and sugar. Flour must be cooked to thicken properly; if it is added raw or left unstirred it can clump and leave a pasty taste. Stirring well as it heats lets starch swell evenly into a smooth sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mint, parsley, peas, flour, sugar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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