Skip to main content
Main

Peas Stewed

A savory stew of green peas cooked with butter, onion, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Peas Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Peel and slice the onion, then sauté the onion in butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add Worcestershire sauce, sugar, pepper, and salt, and simmer for 1 minute.

  3. Add the warmed peas with a little of their liquid.

Thicken and serve

  1. Beat the egg and thicken it with a little flour, then stir it in.

  2. Heat the mixture but do not let it boil.

  3. Serve as a vegetable entrée.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its vegetable base.
Egg
Thickens the mixture and gives it a richer, smoother body when gently heated.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour when used to sauté the onion.
Onion
Provides savoury aroma and flavour as it softens in butter.
Flour
Helps thicken the egg mixture so it coats the peas.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture but do not let it boil. Egg proteins in a thickened mixture can curdle and turn grainy when boiled, so gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, pepper, onion, sugar, flour, sauce. 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.

More stewed peas recipes

and Lettuce 3with Oil 3 See all 30 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes