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To Dress Peas

A stew of peas, bacon or ham, onions, lettuce, parsley, sugar, and optional cream, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and parsley 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 ↓

To Dress Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease the bottom of a stew-pan with butter, then add the bacon or ham pieces.

  2. Layer the peas, onions, lettuce, and parsley on top.

Stew

  1. Cover the pan and stew gently until the lettuce has wilted.

  2. Toss the pan frequently and add the sugar and cream if using.

  3. Cook until the onions are tender 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. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon or ham
Renders fat into the pan and adds savoury flavour to the vegetables.
Peas
Form the main body of the dish and become tender as they stew.
Young onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the pan.
Lettuce
Wilts down to add moisture and body to the stew.
Sugar lumps
Add a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury bacon.

The step that matters

Stew gently with the lid on. Gentle heat with a lid traps steam so the lettuce wilts and the peas and onions cook through without scorching or drying out in the butter and bacon fat.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, lettuce, parsley, sugar, cream, butter. 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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