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To Stew Peas

A stew of peas cooked with gravy or lettuce water, sugar, pepper, salt, and optional butter, mint, onion, egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Stew Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. If using gravy, bring it to a boil.

  2. Add the peas, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew until the peas are tender.

  4. Thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  5. If making a lighter version, use water from washed lettuce.

  6. Add the lettuce, mint, onion, pepper, salt, and sugar.

  7. Stew gently for two hours.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, beat an egg.

  2. Stir in with an ounce of butter before serving.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Peas
Form the body of the stew and provide its main flavor and bulk.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-giving sauce when mixed with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the stew smoothly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory gravy and salt.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter rolled in flour. Adding the flour-butter mixture directly to hot liquid can form lumps. Rolling the butter in flour first coats the flour so it disperses more evenly and thickens the stew smoothly.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, sugar, pepper, butter, flour, mint, onion):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, sugar, pepper, butter, flour, mint, onion. 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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