Green Pea Soup
Boil half a peck of green peas in one and a half gallons of water till quite done. Then strain the peas from the liquor, returning liquor to the pot. Rub the peas through a sieve, chop an onion fine, frying in a little lard, not too brown; add this with chopped thyme, parsley, pepper and salt. Then stir a small dessertspoonful of flour into boiling soup; serve with cubes of toasted bread.
A plain nineteenth-century purée soup, built on the pea cooking water rather than stock. The quantities are large and the units are dry measure, so start by working out what half a peck actually is.
- Half a peck of peasA peck is 8 dry quarts, so half a peck is 4 quarts. Read as peas in the pod -- the usual market unit -- that is roughly 4 lb of pods yielding something like 1 1/2 lb shelled. Frozen peas substitute at about 1 1/2 lb.
- Scale it downA gallon and a half of water is 6 quarts and will fill a stockpot. Halving or quartering the whole recipe gives a manageable pot; the ratios hold.
- "Till quite done"Older peas needed long boiling. Modern garden or frozen peas are tender in 5 to 8 minutes, and pushing past that turns the purée grey-brown. If you want the green colour, cook briefly and accept a paler broth.
- Rubbing through a sieveA blender or food mill does this in a minute. Pass the purée through a fine sieve afterwards if you want it smooth, since pea skins stay gritty however long you blend.
- The onionLard is correct for the period and gives a fuller flavour than oil; butter works. "Not too brown" matters here, as scorched onion dominates a soup with no stock behind it.
- A dessertspoonful of flourAbout 2 teaspoons, which is very little thickening for this volume. Stirring dry flour into boiling liquid will lump; whisk it with a spoonful of cold water or cook it into the fried onion first.
- SeasoningWith water in place of stock the soup leans on salt, pepper, thyme and parsley to carry it. Season at the end, after the purée has gone back in, and taste again once it is hot.
- YieldAt full scale this makes about 6 quarts, enough for 12 to 16 bowls. The toasted bread cubes are croutons; cut them small and add at the table so they stay crisp.
Dried and fresh pea soups are among the oldest recorded English dishes, and cookery books of the period commonly distinguish dried peas for winter pease pottage from fresh green peas for a summer puree like this one. Here the peas are cooked in a large volume of water and that water kept as the base, so the soup stands on the vegetable alone rather than on meat stock. The dry measure is a period marker: peas were sold by volume in the pod, and the cook is left to judge the shelled quantity. The toasted bread cubes served alongside correspond to the croutons of French cookery, a long-established garnish for puree soups.