Skip to main content
Main

Green Peas À LA Française

A French-style green peas dish with butter, flour, onions, parsley, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Green Peas À LA Française

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blend the flour and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 3 cups of plain white stock and bring to a boil.

Cook

  1. Add the sprig of parsley, salt, sugar, onions, and finely cut lettuce.

  2. Stir in the peas, cover the pan, and cook gently for 25-35 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the sprig of parsley before serving and stir in chopped parsley and 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.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

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

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Young green peas
Main vegetable that provides the sweet flavour and the body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the sauce and the finish.
Button onions
Add mild sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Cooking gently after adding the peas. A gentle simmer keeps the peas tender and bright green rather than soft and grey. Covering the pan holds in steam so the peas cook evenly. Cooking long enough also lets the flour fully thicken and lose its raw taste.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, onion, parsley, sugar. 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.

You might also like

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