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Purée of Green Peas

A smooth puree made from green peas, seasoned with salt, parsley, chives, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,150 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Purée of Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peas in cold water for 12 hours.

Make the puree

  1. Scald the peas, then stew them with salt, parsley, and chives until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve (tamis).

  3. Moisten the puree with jus and season to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + chivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together227 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Peas + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together573 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Parsley + meattop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Form the base of the puree, giving body, color, and most of its flavor.
Jus (meat or vegetable stock)
Moistens the puree, loosening its texture and adding savory depth.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the puree.
Chopped chives
Adds mild onion-like aroma and freshness to the puree.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a fine sieve (tamis). Straining removes fibrous skins and bits of pea, so the puree becomes smooth. Stewing until fully tender also helps, since soft peas break down more easily through the sieve.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, chive, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, chive, meat. 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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