Name: Green Pease Stewed with Lettuce
Ingredients: 2 cups green peas; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 head of lettuce, chopped; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 cup good gravy; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 tablespoons butter (for thickening); 1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped

Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pease Stewed with Lettuce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the peas in hard water with salt until nearly done, then drain in a sieve.
Fry the chopped lettuce in butter until wilted.

Make the stew

In a stewpan, combine the peas, fried lettuce, gravy, pepper, and salt.
Thicken the mixture with flour and butter, then add the chopped mint.
Serve hot.

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.

Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,137 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together569 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,372 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

Green peas: Provide the main body and mild sweetness of the stew.
Lettuce: Wilts into the stew, adding moisture and a soft, tender texture.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour: Its starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the stew.
Gravy: Supplies the savory liquid base that carries the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour thickens only when its starch is evenly dispersed and heated in liquid, so it swells and sets the sauce. Adding it unevenly or without enough stirring can leave lumps or a thin, uneven texture.

Swap the mint

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

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Parsleyfits better
Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, butter, pepper, 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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Green Pease Stewed with Lettuce