Name: Green Peas a LA Fran9aise
Ingredients: 1½ pints young green peas; 1½ ounces flour; 1 ounce butter; 8-12 button onions; 1 sprig parsley; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon white sugar; 2 lettuces; optional: chopped parsley, butter or cream for serving

Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Green Peas a LA Fran9aise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Blend the flour and butter in a saucepan.
Add 1½ cups of plain white stock and bring to a boil.

Cook the peas

Add the sprig of parsley, salt, white sugar, peeled onions, and cut lettuces.
Add the peas, cover the pan, and cook gently for 25-35 minutes.
Remove the sprig of parsley before serving and stir in chopped parsley with a pat of butter or a spoonful of cream.

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.

Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,236 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

Young green peas: Form the main body of the dish and provide its sweet, fresh flavour.
Flour: Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Button onions: Contribute mild sweetness and aroma as they cook in the sauce.
Lettuces: Soften as they cook, adding body and a gentle vegetable flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Blending the flour and butter before adding the stock. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly. Without this, the sauce can turn lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, flour, butter, onion, sugar, lettuce):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Cinnamonfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, flour, butter, onion, sugar, lettuce. 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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Green Peas a LA Fran9aise