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Creamy Pea & Watercress Pasta

This zesty pasta dish is superhealthy and packed with summer flavour

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pasta and tarragon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 34 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep10 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Bring a large pan of water to a boil, add the penne, and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add the peas to the pan for the final 2 minutes of cooking.

  3. Meanwhile, finely grate the garlic into a large bowl. Add the mascarpone, lemon zest and all the lemon juice, and stir until smooth.

  4. Finely chop the tarragon and set it aside.

  5. Before draining, scoop out a little of the cooking water and set it aside. Drain the pasta and peas well.

  6. Add the hot pasta and peas to the mascarpone bowl along with the watercress, and toss until the watercress wilts.

  7. Stir in the tarragon, loosening with a splash of the reserved cooking water if needed, and serve straight away.

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pasta + tarragontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together884 recipes

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

  3. Watercress + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Watercress + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pasta + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pasta, peas, watercress, tarragon, lemon):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Dillbetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pasta, peas, watercress, tarragon, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).