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CROUTONS (a l'Artois)
Fry some croutons (see the preceding recipe). Pour over them a puree of young peas (see PEAS, PUREE OF), thinned with a little stock, and seasoned with salt and pepper. Serve as hot as possible. Time, five minutes to fry the croutons. Sufficient, a quart of puree for four or five persons. Probable cost of peas, when in full season, 6d. per peck.
A late-Victorian savoury of fried bread under a thin green pea purée — closer to a small hot entrée or a soup garnish elevated to a course than to anything you would scatter on a salad. Two things decide whether it works: the bread must be crisp and the purée must go on at the last moment.
- Croutons meant something biggerIn Victorian usage a crouton is a shaped slice of stale bread — a round, oval, heart or triangle — fried in butter or dripping until golden on both sides. The exact cut and fat are in the preceding recipe, which this one simply cross-refers to. The small dice sold in bags today will collapse under a quart of purụe.
- Assemble at the table, not beforeAssemble at the last moment, not before -- Fried bread loses its crispness quickly under a wet purée. Have the croutons draining hot on paper and the purée hot in the pan, and pour only as the dish goes out.
- Consistency of the puréeConsistency of the purée -- Thinned with stock it should coat the back of a spoon and just flow, not pool like soup. The purée itself comes from the separate entry the recipe points to; a blender plus a fine sieve gets there faster and greener.
- A quart for four is generousA quart is generous -- Spread over four or five people that is roughly a cup of purée each, a soup-sized serving for what is essentially a dressing on fried bread. For a modern first course, rather less per person and three or four croutons will do.
- A peck of peasA peck is two dry gallons — roughly 7 to 8 lb of peas in the pod, yielding perhaps 2 to 2.5 lb shelled. Sixpence a peck marks the height of the English season, when green peas were briefly cheap; frozen peas give a better colour than anything out of season.
- Season after thinningStock carries its own salt, and pea purée dulls quickly. Taste once the purée is at pouring consistency and hot, then salt and pepper. A little sugar helps if the peas are older than "young".
- Frying timeFive minutes is for the batch, turned once or twice. Bread browns unevenly if the pan is crowded; work in two lots rather than lowering the heat.
The tag à l'Artois belongs to the nineteenth-century French kitchen's habit of naming garnishes and small dishes after provinces, families and patrons — Artois being the old province in the far north of France. The economics tell you as much as the method. Green peas were one of the great markers of the English season, dear when forced early and briefly cheap at the height of summer, which is why the book bothers to specify "when in full season" alongside its sixpence a peck.