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Peas with Cream

A simple dish of peas cooked in butter, flour, cream, and a touch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peas with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the peas and dry them as much as possible.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Once boiling, stir in the flour and cook for 3-4 minutes without browning.

  3. Gradually add the cream and a small amount of sugar, then bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the peas and gently toss until heated through.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

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 their moisture is what the cream coats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, coating sauce.
Rich cream
Provides the liquid base and richness that gives the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter without browning. Cooking the flour and butter gently for 3-4 minutes cooks out the raw starch taste and lets it thicken evenly. If it browns, the sauce takes on a toasted, bitter flavour and the colour changes.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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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