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Slewed Peas and Lettuce

A stew of green peas and cabbage lettuce flavored with gravy, butter, ham essence, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Slewed Peas and Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the peas and chopped lettuce into a stewpan with the gravy.

  2. Stew until tender.

  3. Add the butter, essence of ham, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens, then serve.

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. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the bulk of the dish and give it its main body and sweet, vegetal flavour.
Cabbage lettuce
Softens as it stews, adding tender leaves and a mild, fresh vegetable flavour.
Gravy
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and carries savoury flavour through the dish.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it melts into the hot liquid and thickens the mixture while adding richness.
Essence of ham
Adds concentrated smoky, savoury ham flavour to the stewed vegetables.

The step that matters

Stirring in the floured butter. Flour-coated butter must be stirred into simmering liquid and kept moving so the starch hydrates evenly. Stopping the stir risks lumps, and boiling too hard can make the thickened mixture separate or turn gluey.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lettuce, butter, flour, ham, pepper):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lettuce, butter, flour, ham, pepper. 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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