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Stewed Peas

A simple dish of peas simmered with egg, flour, butter, optional sugar, and mint.

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

Stewed Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Wash the peas and stew them gently for two hours.

  2. Beat the egg and stir it into the peas.

  3. Add flour and butter to the mixture.

Season and finish

  1. If desired, add sugar for sweetness.

  2. Chop mint and stew it with the peas.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Fresh peas
Form the body of the dish and turn tender during long, gentle stewing.
Egg
Thickens and binds the stewed peas as its proteins set with gentle heat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and gives the stew a fuller body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the peas.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic herbal note to the stewed peas.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg into the peas. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can curdle or scramble if the mixture is too hot or stirred poorly. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring steadily helps the egg thicken the peas smoothly.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, egg, flour, 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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