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Steamed Peas
The most delicious way of cooking green peas is to put them in a basin without any water, and place in a steamer. It will require half as long again as for boiling. When tender season well with butter, salt, pepper and hot milk. Serve when hot.
A method rather than a formula: peas cook in their own moisture in a covered bowl set over steam, so nothing leaches into the water. The only real translation needed is the timing, which assumes older, starchier peas than anything sold today.
- "Basin"A British basin is a deep heatproof bowl, usually earthenware or pudding-china. Any oven-safe bowl that fits inside a steamer or a covered pan set over an inch of simmering water will do; cover the bowl with a plate or foil so condensate from the lid does not drip in and defeat the point of the method.
- The timing is the problemPeriod cookbooks commonly gave peas twenty to thirty minutes' boiling, so "half as long again" points to something like 30 to 45. Garden peas picked young, and certainly frozen peas, are done in 4 to 8 minutes by this method. Start checking at four and go by taste.
- Why steaming works herePeas hold a lot of sugar and water-soluble vitamins that boiling carries off. Enclosing them in a dry covered bowl means they essentially braise in the liquid they release.
- Hot milk, not coldThe milk is added hot on purpose. Cold dairy poured over hot peas cools the dish and thins the small amount of buttery liquid in the bowl into something watery. Warm it, and add it a spoonful at a time until the peas are glossy rather than swimming.
- SeasoningFor a pound of shelled peas, roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons butter, 2 to 3 tablespoons hot milk, half a teaspoon salt and a few grinds of pepper. A pinch of sugar is a legitimate period touch if the peas are older and mealy.
- YieldA pound of peas in the pod gives about a cup shelled and serves two; for four, buy two to two and a half pounds unshelled, or use a 1 lb bag of frozen peas.
- Serve immediately"Serve when hot" is not filler. Peas dull in colour and toughen slightly as they sit in a warm bowl, and the milk-and-butter liquid separates.
Green peas were one of the few vegetables the English-speaking kitchen treated with real reverence, and cookbooks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fussed over them at length, adding mint, sugar or a pod or two to the water. The steaming instruction here fits an argument that reformers and domestic-science writers were making by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, attacking the habit of boiling vegetables hard in a lot of water and then pouring the water down the drain, on the grounds that flavour and nourishment went with it. Books like this one, published for the household cook rather than the professional, are full of that argument in miniature — a short paragraph asserting that one method is simply better, with no explanation offered.