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Chicken in Peas
Take a fresh young chicken. Cut it into neat joints, and lay them in a saucepan with a quart of fine fresh peas, measured after they are shelled. Add a piece of butter about the size of a walnut, a bunch of parsley, a pinch of salt, a small pinch of pepper, and a small onion. Pour a cupful of good gravy over them, and simmer gently until the liquor is exhausted. Then mix a small lump of butter with a tea-spoonful of flour, and put this to the peas, which should be boiling when it is put in. Shake the saucepan about until the peas are nicely thickened, and serve them piled high in a dish, with the pieces of chicken round. The chicken and peas must be gently stewed. Probable cost: chicken, 2s. 6d.; peas, 8d. per peck. Sufficient for four persons.
A one-pot stew of jointed chicken and green peas, thickened at the last moment with kneaded butter and flour. The main adjustment is timing: the peas of 1890 were starchier and slower than anything sold today.
- The hinge: don't cook the peas the whole timePeas of the period were starchier and would stand a longer stew than modern shelled or frozen peas, which soften fast. Stew the chicken in the gravy with the parsley, onion and seasoning first, then add the peas for the last five to eight minutes.
- A quart of shelled peasAn imperial quart is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb (600-700 g) of podded peas, which takes something over 3 lb of peas in the pod. Frozen petits pois are a fair substitute and need barely three minutes.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 oz / 30 g. The second "small lump" for the thickening is half that, kneaded raw with a teaspoon of flour — beurre manié. It must go into liquid that is actually bubbling, or it will sit in lumps.
- A cupful of good gravyAbout 8-10 fl oz / 240-280 ml, depending on the cup. "Gravy" here generally means meat stock or the reduced juices of a roast rather than a thickened pan sauce. Unsalted stock is safer, since the liquid is reduced almost to nothing.
- "Simmer until the liquor is exhausted"Take it to a few tablespoons of glossy liquid rather than a dry pan; the beurre manié needs something to thicken. If it reduces too far, add a splash more stock.
- A fresh young chickenA spring chicken of the period was a small bird, commonly under 3 lb. A supermarket bird of 3 1/2 to 4 lb works but needs longer — 25 to 35 minutes at a bare simmer for leg joints, and the thickest part should reach 165F / 74C.
- The bunch of parsley and the onionThe recipe does not say what becomes of them, but both read as flavourings and are best lifted out before serving. Tie the parsley with string and keep the onion whole and peeled if you mean to remove it.
- YieldFour, as stated, if the chicken is a small one and there is bread or potato alongside. The dish is presented peas-first, heaped in the centre with the joints ringed around.
The pairing is an old one: petits pois à la française — peas braised with butter, onion and a lettuce or herb bundle — was the standard French treatment, and this dish bears a clear resemblance to it. The costing tells you as much as the method. Peas at eightpence a peck were a summer glut vegetable, sold by volume from barrows and shelled at home, while the chicken at two shillings and sixpence was by far the expensive item; the peas are piled high and the meat arranged around them partly because that was the honest proportion of the dish. Green peas were also strictly seasonal in a way that is hard to picture now — canned and dried peas existed, but the fresh ones ran from early summer to about August, and recipes like this one appear in the books precisely for those weeks.