Pea Soup
For one-half peck of peas, if fresh, boil shells in two quarts of water one half hour. Strain off and put in half of the peas, boil one half hour; then put in the remainder. When tender take out one cup of the peas, and put the rest through a sieve or colander, then put back on the stove and add two ounces of butter with one tablespoonful of flour. Stir into it pepper and salt and one half pint of cream or rich milk. Serve with croutons or fried bread. -Mrs. Amey Fallon, Wayne, Pa.
A straightforward fresh pea soup built on a stock made from the pods, which is the part most modern recipes throw away. The only real translation needed is the old dry measure and the cooking times.
- Half a peck of peasA peck is 8 dry quarts, so half a peck is 4 quarts of peas in the pod — roughly 4 lb unshelled, yielding about 4 cups of shelled peas. Buying shelled or frozen peas instead means you lose the pod stock, which is where much of the flavour comes from.
- The pod stock is the pointSimmering the shells in two quarts of water for half an hour and straining them out gives a sweet, grassy base. Press the pods against the sieve to extract the liquid, then discard them; they are too fibrous to purée.
- Cooking timesHalf an hour suggests larger, starchier peas than the ones sold today. Modern garden or frozen peas are tender in 5 to 8 minutes and turn khaki and flat-tasting if boiled for thirty. Add them in the two stages as directed but judge by tenderness, not the clock.
- The reserved cupThe recipe takes out a cup of whole peas but never says what becomes of them; the obvious use is to return them to the finished soup for garnish and texture. Hold them in a little cold water or on ice so they keep their colour while the rest is puréed.
- Sieve or blenderA blender or immersion blender does in seconds what the colander did slowly, but pea skins stay gritty in a blender. For the smooth texture the original intends, pass the purée through a fine sieve afterwards.
- ThickeningTwo ounces of butter (4 tablespoons) with one tablespoon of flour is a very loose roux, meant to be stirred straight into the hot soup. Cook it a minute or two after it goes in so the flour does not taste raw, and keep the heat gentle.
- Cream at the endHalf a pint is one cup. Add it off the boil — a rolling boil after the cream goes in will curdle it and dull the colour. Warm the soup back through and serve.
- YieldAbout two and a half quarts, serving six to eight as a first course. Croutons fried in butter, as suggested, are still the right accompaniment.
Fresh pea soup of this kind belongs to the brief early-summer window when shelling peas came in by the peck from the garden or the market wagon, and it stands apart from the year-round dried split pea soup that shares its name. The instruction to boil the empty pods first is old thrift raised to technique: the shells hold a great deal of sweetness. That this version is credited to Mrs. Amey Fallon of Wayne, Pennsylvania is typical of subscription and community compilations, which were often assembled from contributions by named women — church and club cookbooks and their commercial imitators traded on that authority, each recipe vouched for by a real household rather than an anonymous editor.