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Puree of Peas
Boil a quart of marrowfat peas in the usual manner, with mint, a few green onions, and a small bunch of parsley; strain off the water, and pound the whole in a mortar; then put into a stewpan, add a little sugar, one spoonful of white sauce; make it hot; pass it through a sieve; place in a stewpan and warm before using it; mix in a small piece of glaze and a piece of fresh butter.
A classic French-style pea purée, thickened with a spoonful of béchamel and finished with meat glaze and butter. The whole thing hinges on the final sieving and the butter going in off the boil.
- A quart of peasThe quart most likely refers to shelled peas, roughly 1 1/4 lb, about 4 cups, though period books are not always consistent about whether peas were measured in or out of the pod. Frozen peas work and need only 4-5 minutes; the puree is smoother if the peas are young rather than fully mature.
- Marrowfat peasMarrowfats are peas left on the vine to mature and starchy as a result. Sold dried in Britain for mushy peas; if you use dried marrowfats they need soaking overnight and long simmering, which changes the character of the dish. Ordinary garden or frozen peas give the fresher result the recipe seems to want.
- "In the usual manner"Salted water at a rolling boil, with the mint, spring onions and parsley thrown in. Period instructions often call for boiling peas considerably longer than we would; 5-8 minutes for fresh peas is plenty, and overcooking dulls the colour you are about to rely on.
- White sauceA spoonful of plain white sauce: butter and flour cooked together with milk whisked in, though in books of this date "white sauce" can also mean a stock-based version. Its job here is body, not flavour, so keep the quantity as small as stated.
- GlazeGlaze means glace de viande, veal or beef stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A teaspoon is enough for this quantity. Commercial demi-glace concentrate is the nearest substitute; a stock cube is not, being mostly salt.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor or blender replaces the mortar, but do not skip the sieve afterwards. Pea skins survive any machine, and pushing the purée through a fine sieve or drum sieve is what separates this from mashed peas.
- FinishingWarm the sieved purée gently and beat in the glaze and butter off direct heat. If it boils after the butter goes in, the emulsion breaks and the surface turns oily.
- YieldServes four as a vegetable alongside meat such as lamb, duck or ham.
Pea purée of this kind belongs to the nineteenth-century professional repertoire that filtered into household books like this one: peas cooked with mint and onion in the English manner, then passed through a sieve and enriched with béchamel, meat glaze and butter in the French one. The tell is the glaze, an ingredient that assumes a stockpot running continuously in the kitchen; by 1900 that assumption was already becoming unrealistic in a household without servants. Marrowfat peas are often said to take their name from the old comparison of their soft, fat interior to bone marrow, and the variety was well established in English gardens by the eighteenth century. Mint with peas is a British habit of long standing, and is generally traced to the same herb-and-vegetable pairings that produced mint sauce with lamb.