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Poulet Saute Aux Petits Pois

A sautéed chicken dish with peas, butter, flour, stock, and a hint of mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 124,287 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Poulet Saute Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Cut the chicken into neat dice, not too small.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the chicken pieces.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, and a pinch of mace.

  5. Toss until light brown.

  6. Dredge in the flour. Stir it around.

Make the gravy and peas

  1. Add the stock and peas.

  2. Stew until the peas are tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Add the sugar.

  4. Adjust seasoning with more pepper and salt if necessary.

Serve

  1. Place the chicken in the center of a hot dish.

  2. Surround with peas.

  3. Pour the gravy over all.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,528 recipes

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked until lightly browned for flavour.
Butter
Fat that carries the seasoning and helps the chicken brown.
Flour
Dredged onto the chicken so it thickens the stock into a gravy.
Stock
Liquid that becomes the gravy and moistens the chicken.
Peas
Stewed until tender, adding sweetness and colour around the chicken.

The step that matters

Toss until light brown. Browning the chicken in butter builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pieces left pale will taste flat, and crowding the pan causes steaming instead of browning.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Turmericbetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, flour, peas, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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