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Chickens in Peas

A simple chicken and peas dish cooked with butter, green onion, parsley, flour, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chickens in Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chicken joints, peas, butter, green onion, and parsley.

  2. Dust the mixture with flour and moisten with gravy, then cook over medium heat until the sauce thickens.

  3. Add salt and sugar just before serving, if desired.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Chicken joints
Provide the main protein, which cooks in the sauce and releases flavor into it.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and savory flavor that forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives a smoother mouthfeel.
Young peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the sauce thickens. Flour needs sustained heat to swell and gelatinize fully, so the sauce thickens properly. Heating too fast can scorch the bottom or leave the flour tasting raw, so stir gently and cook until the sauce coats a spoon.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, parsley, 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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