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Peas with Sugar

Peas cooked with butter, onions, herbs, lettuce, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Peas with Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell and wash the peas.

  2. In a saucepan, combine peas, butter, onions, parsley, thyme, lettuce, sugar, and salt.

Cook

  1. Cover the saucepan with a plate and add water.

  2. Gradually add more water as it evaporates.

  3. Shake the peas occasionally and cook on low heat for 1 hour.

  4. Remove from heat and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Provide the main body and sweet, tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the slow cooking.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften in the pan.
Lettuce heart
Softens into the peas, adding moisture and a mild, tender body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury onion and herbs.

The step that matters

Gradually adding water as it evaporates. Cooking peas slowly on low heat with the pan covered keeps moisture in. If the pan runs dry, the peas and onions can scorch and stick, so water should be added as needed.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, parsley, thyme, lettuce, 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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