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Mold, Green Peas a LA Francaise

A dish of young green peas cooked with butter, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,887 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mold, Green Peas a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the peas and butter in a bowl, mixing until the butter adheres to the peas.

  2. Drain the peas in a colander.

Cook

  1. Place the peas in a thick saucepan over gentle heat, stirring occasionally for 20 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water to just cover the peas and a small amount of salt.

  3. Boil quickly for 40 minutes, stirring in a lump of sugar dipped in water.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
The main ingredient, providing the bulk and the fresh, sweet flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and coats the peas for a smooth, silky texture.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to the peas.

The step that matters

Boiling quickly for 40 minutes. Prolonged boiling softens peas further and can dull their bright green colour. Keeping the water just covering the peas concentrates flavour and limits how much liquid is needed to finish the dish.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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