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Green Peas À LA Crème

A creamy green pea side dish with butter, salt, sugar, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Green Peas À LA Crème

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Boil the peas for 15 minutes, then drain them well.

Cook in butter and cream

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the peas and shake them until the butter is dissolved and begins to simmer.

  3. Stir in the salt, sugar, and cream.

  4. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes until the peas are tender but not bursting.

  5. Serve hot in the sauce.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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 + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Young peas
Provide the main body and tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, forming the silky base that coats the peas.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and body, thickening the buttery liquid into a creamy sauce.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness that balances the savoury salt and the flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Cook the peas until tender but not bursting. Overcooking breaks down the pea skins and cell walls, leaving them mushy and dull in colour. Stopping when they are just tender keeps their texture and bright flavour, while the cream and butter stay smooth rather than splitting from prolonged boiling.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Filbertfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream. 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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