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Peas with Cream Sauce

Peas cooked in a butter, flour, and milk sauce seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peas with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the peas

  1. Bring a kettle of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the peas and cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the peas and set aside.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until it boils.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the peas.

  6. Keep over boiling water for about 5 minutes before serving.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide its vegetable bulk and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it its creamy body.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually while stirring. Adding liquid to the flour and butter all at once can leave lumps. Stirring constantly while gradually adding milk lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken into a smooth sauce as it comes to a boil.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, 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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