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Peas
In shelling green peas great care should be used that no dirt or bits of pod mix with them, as peas lose so much of their sweetness by washing. Put the peas in warm water, only enough to keep them from burning, season with salt to taste; then cook slowly; if young they will be tender in twenty minutes. When done, stir in enough butter to make them quite rich, and serve with roast lamb.
A short method that assumes fresh-shelled garden peas cooked in barely any water — closer to a braise than a boil. The points below cover the parts that need translating.
- The hinge: almost no water"Only enough to keep them from burning" means just a shallow film of water in the pan. The peas cook largely in their own moisture, so the liquid is not poured off with the flavour in it.
- Twenty minutes is for old-fashioned peasTwenty minutes is a long cook by modern standards -- the recipe gives twenty minutes even for young peas. Modern shelled fresh peas are tender in 3–6 minutes; frozen peas need 2–3. Twenty minutes will give you grey mush.
- Why not to wash themThe advice is sound as far as it goes — soaking leaches sugars — but it presumes clean pods from your own garden. Rinse market peas briefly in cold water and drain well rather than eating grit.
- Warm water, not boilingThe recipe starts the peas in warm water and cooks them slowly rather than plunging them into a hard boil. It works, though it costs you some of the bright colour that a fast cook preserves.
- "Enough butter to make them quite rich"No quantity is given; "quite rich" implies a generous hand. A tablespoon or two per pound of shelled peas is a reasonable starting point, stirred in at the end.
- YieldA pound of peas in the pod gives roughly a cup of shelled peas — one to two servings. For four people at a roast dinner, buy 2–3 lb in the pod, or use 1 lb of frozen peas.
- Sugar and mintNeither appears in this version, though mint with peas is a familiar English pairing and a pinch of sugar is sometimes suggested elsewhere. Sugar compensates for peas that have sat too long since picking, since their sugars turn to starch quickly after harvest.
Green peas eaten fresh rather than dried were a luxury vegetable well into the nineteenth century — dried peas for pottage were the everyday form, and the sweet green sort had a short season and a reputation for extravagance. By the time this book was compiled, home gardens and improved market transport had made a dish of June peas an ordinary part of the American table, and the pairing with roast lamb reflects the calendar as much as the palate: spring lamb and the first peas arrived together. The insistence on not washing them, and on cooking in the barest amount of water, is a preoccupation you find repeated across household manuals of the era, which warned against boiling the goodness out of vegetables and pouring it down the drain.