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Green Peas a LA Franqaise, or French Fashion

A dish of young peas cooked with butter, sugar, flour, and salt, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Green Peas a LA Franqaise, or French Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Place the peas in a pot of spring water with 2 ounces of butter and mix until the butter coats the peas.

  2. Drain the peas in a colander and transfer them to a thick saucepan without any water.

Cook

  1. Cook over gentle heat, stirring occasionally for 20 minutes until they begin to simmer.

  2. Add boiling water to just cover the peas and a pinch of salt, then boil quickly for 40 minutes.

  3. Mix in a small lump of sugar dipped in water and a smooth mixture of ½ ounce of butter and 1 teaspoon of flour.

  4. Shake over the heat for 2 minutes.

  5. Serve immediately in a hot dish.

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 tender as they cook slowly in butter and water.
Butter
Adds richness and coats the peas, carrying flavour through the gentle cooking.
Flour
Blended with butter, it thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth sauce.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury peas.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour lumps easily if added dry or too hot. Smoothing it into butter first lets it disperse evenly, so the liquid thickens without clumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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