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Pease Stewed in Cream
Put two or three pints of young green pease into a sauce-pan of boiling water; when nearly done and tender, drain in a colander, quite dry; melt two ounces of butter in a clean stew-pan, thicken evenly with a little flour, shake it over the fire, but do not let it brown, mix smoothly with a gill of cream, add half a tea-spoon of white sugar, bring to a boil, pour in the pease, keep moving for two minutes until well heated, and serve hot. The sweet pods of young pease are made by the Germans into a palatable dish by simply stewing with a little butter and 'savory herbs. -Mrs. W. A. Croffut. How TO BOIL RICE.
Rice should be carefully picked over, washed in warm water, rubbed between the hands, and then rinsed several times in cold water till white. Put one tea-cupful in a tin pan or porcelain kettle, add one quart boiling water; boil fifteen minutes, not stirring, but taking care that it does not burn; add one tea-spoon salt, pour into a dish and send to table, placing a lump of butter in the center. Cooked thus the kernels remain whole.
To boil rice in milk, put a pint rice into nearly two quarts of cold milk an hour before dinner, add two tea-spoons salt, boil very slowly and stir often; cook on back part of stove or range so as to avoid burning, and take it up into a mold or bowl wet in cold water a short time before serving.
Or, after cooking, drain carefully, stir in two well-beaten eggs, one table-spoon grated cheese, half a table-spoon butter, half a tea-spoon salt; bake a few minutes in shallow pans. Some soak rice an hour or two before cooking.
A simple butter-and-cream sauce for fresh peas, with a run of rice cookery appended by the typesetter. A few of the measures and habits need translating.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fluid ounces. Two ounces of butter is half a stick. "A little flour" is left to the cook's judgement; a tablespoon or so is enough to thicken a gill of cream without stodge.
- Quantity of peasTwo to three pints of shelled peas is a lot: roughly 1.25 to 2 lb, serving six to eight. Frozen petits pois work if fresh shelling peas are out of season, but they need only a minute or two in the boiling water.
- Do not brown the rouxThe instruction to shake it over the fire "but do not let it brown" is the hinge. This is meant to be a pale, sweet sauce; a blond or brown roux gives it a nutty flavour that fights the peas.
- The two-minute ruleThe peas go in already cooked and are only reheated. Longer than a couple of minutes and they lose colour and turn mealy. Have the serving dish warm and ready.
- Drain "quite dry"Worth taking seriously — water clinging to the peas will thin the sauce past the point of clinging. Shake the colander well and let them steam off for a moment.
- The sugarHalf a teaspoon in that volume is seasoning, not sweetening; with genuinely young peas it can be left out entirely. Add salt and white pepper, which the original omits.
- Pea pods, German fashionThe note about stewing the pods refers to the tender pods of very young peas, closer to a modern sugar snap or mangetout. Mature shelling-pea pods are fibrous and will not soften into anything palatable.
- The rice paragraphsA separate recipe under its own heading that has run together with the peas in this transcription. A teacupful is usually reckoned at about six fluid ounces, though usage varied. One cup of rice to a quart of water is far more liquid than an absorption method needs, and the original never mentions draining it.
Buckeye Cookery, whose title points to Ohio origins and which is also known in a Minneapolis edition, was assembled from contributions by named women — hence the signature of Mrs. W. A. Croffut. Peas in a butter-and-cream sauce belong to the older English tradition of dressing garden vegetables in a white sauce, and the recipe reflects a period when green peas were strictly a few weeks of early summer. The aside on the Germans stewing pea pods is characteristic of these community books, and it points at a genuine thrift.