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Green Peas a LA Francaise

A French-style green peas dish cooked with butter, herbs, lettuce, onions, and finished with a roux and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 261 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Peas a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Combine green peas, melted butter, sweet herbs, chives, lettuce, onions, salt, and sugar in a stewpan.

  2. Boil slowly, stirring occasionally until the peas are tender.

  3. Remove the sweet herbs and lettuce, then add the butter rolled in flour.

  4. After half an hour, stir in the beaten egg yolks until mixed and warm.

Serve

  1. 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. Chive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Chive + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its tender texture when cooked.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the cooking liquid, giving the peas a smoother, more coating sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the liquid gently when stirred in warm, adding richness.
Onions
Add savoury aroma and depth to the cooking liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble and turn grainy if the liquid boils after they are added. Stir them in off the heat or over very low heat, so the mixture warms and thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, butter, chive, lettuce, sugar, flour, egg. 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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