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To Stew Old Peas

A simple stew of peas, ham or bacon, stock, sugar, butter, and flour.

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 Old Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a saucepan, combine weak stock, ham or bacon, and peas.

  2. Add pounded loaf sugar and cover the pan tightly.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew for nearly 1 hour or until peas are tender.

  2. Remove the ham and add a bit of butter rolled in flour.

  3. 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. 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. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  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, becoming soft and tender as they stew.
Weak stock
Provides the cooking liquid that softens the peas and carries flavour through the dish.
Ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the stewing liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky finish when rolled in flour and stirred into the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid, giving the sauce body when mixed with butter.

The step that matters

Covering the pan tightly while stewing. A tight lid traps steam and keeps the liquid from evaporating, so the peas cook gently in moist heat and stay tender rather than drying out.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sugar, 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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