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Stewed Green Peas

A simple stew of young green peas cooked with butter, flour, and optional herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Put 2-3 pints of young green peas in a pot of water and cook until nearly tender.

  2. Drain the peas in a colander.

  3. If the pods are clean and fresh, boil them first in water, then add them to the peas.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt 2 ounces of butter and stir in 2 ounces of flour; cook for 5 minutes.

  2. For a variation, stir in some savory herbs with the butter.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Young green peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its fresh, sweet flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the stew body.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour roux. Cooking the flour in butter for 5 minutes cooks off its raw starchy taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stopping early leaves a pasty flavor and a thin, lumpy sauce.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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