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Green Peas with Cream, Shabon Style

A creamy pea dish flavored with butter, thyme, and egg yolks, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Green Peas with Cream, Shabon Style

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. In a saucepan, combine peas, cold water, butter, lettuce, and thyme.

  2. Cover and cook over medium heat, tossing occasionally.

  3. Once cooked, remove the lettuce and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix double cream with egg yolks.

  2. Off the heat, combine the cream mixture with the peas.

  3. Serve with small pieces of toasted bread around the dish.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lettuce + thymetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh young peas
Provide the main body and sweet, green flavour of the dish.
Double cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the peas a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture when gently heated, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while the peas cook in the saucepan.

The step that matters

Combine the cream mixture off the heat. Egg yolks thicken and can scramble if they meet high heat. Adding the cream mixture to the hot peas off the heat lets them set smoothly into a creamy sauce rather than curdling.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lettuce, thyme, pepper, sugar, cream, egg. 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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