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Green Peas with Lettuce

A dish of green peas cooked with lettuce, spring onions, parsley, butter, sugar, and gravy or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Green Peas with Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the heart of the lettuce with the spring onions and parsley, and place it in the center of the peas.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, gravy or cold water, and salt.

Cook

  1. Cover and cook gently for about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the lettuce and herbs.

  3. Melt the remaining butter, stir in the flour, and mix with the peas.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

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

Shelled peas
The main vegetable, providing the bulk and sweet flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor; part is melted with flour to thicken the juices.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth sauce when mixed with melted butter.
Lettuce (in the method)
Flavors the peas as it cooks, then is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the flour butter mixture. Flour must be cooked in melted butter and stirred in evenly, otherwise it can clump and leave the sauce lumpy or floury-tasting.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, butter, sugar, 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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