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Peas with Bacon

A savory dish of peas cooked with bacon, butter, stock, chives, parsley, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Peas with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Fry and heat

  1. Fry the bacon pieces in butter for a few minutes.

  2. In a stewpan, heat the peas with some butter for a few minutes.

Make the peas

  1. Add stock to moisten the peas.

  2. Add the bacon, chives, and parsley.

  3. Taste and add sugar if too salty.

  4. Remove chives and parsley before serving.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, fry the bacon.

  2. Add peas with sweet herbs, pepper, and water or stock.

  3. Let them stew until done, stirring occasionally.

  4. Remove sweet herbs and 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and carry its sweet, fresh flavour.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that coats the peas.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the peas and bacon are fried.
Stock
Provides moisture so the peas stew gently without drying out.
Chives
Add a mild oniony aroma that brightens the dish.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance salt from the bacon and stock.

The step that matters

Let them stew until done, stirring occasionally.. Peas cook quickly and overcook into a mushy texture if left too long. Stirring keeps them evenly heated and prevents sticking to the pan, while moisture from the stock keeps them tender.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chive, parsley, sugar, 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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