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Petits-pois

A simple dish of boiled peas cooked with butter, cream, sugar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Petits-pois

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the peas and select the youngest ones.

  2. Soak the peas in cold water.

  3. Boil the pods in a kettle of water for 30 minutes. Strain the water. Return the water to the kettle and bring it to a boil.

Cook the peas

  1. Drain the peas. Add the peas to the boiling liquid without covering.

  2. Boil for 20 to 30 minutes until tender, then remove from heat immediately. Drain all but ½ cup of the liquid.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter, pepper, salt, sugar, and cream.

  2. Stir in a pinch of flour (if desired). Boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture over the peas and serve. Optionally, add a head of lettuce.

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh peas
The main vegetable, providing the body and sweet, fresh flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and silkiness to the cooking liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury seasoning.
Flour
Optional thickener that helps the liquid cling to the peas.

The step that matters

Remove the peas from heat as soon as they are tender. Peas keep cooking in their residual heat, so leaving them on the boil past tenderness makes them mushy and dull in colour and flavour.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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