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To Stew Green Peas

A simple stew of green peas, lettuce, onion, butter, pepper, and salt, optionally finished with egg, flour, sugar, or mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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To Stew Green Peas

Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

To Stew Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine peas, lettuce, onion, butter, pepper, salt, and just enough water to cover the lettuce in a pot.

  2. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  3. Beat the egg and stir it in. Mix in flour and butter.

  4. Optionally, add sugar and chopped mint for flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lettuce + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Green peas
Form the main body of the dish and give it its bulk.
Lettuce
Softens during gentle stewing and adds moisture and a mild, sweet body to the peas.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stewed vegetables and carries flavor.
Egg
Thickens the liquid as it sets when stirred into the hot stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid, giving the stew a looser, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it to very hot liquid too fast can curdle it into lumps. Stirring steadily while adding it keeps the stew smooth and lightly thickened.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, butter, pepper, egg, flour, 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.

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