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Green Peas, to Boil
Green peas, when gathered young, shelled just before they are cooked, and dressed properly, are amongst the most delicious of vegetables. If they are very unequal in size, they should be shaken through a coarse sieve, and the smaller ones put into the water ten minutes after the large ones. Throw them into plenty of fastboiling water, to which a table-spoonful of salt has been added, and keep the pan uncovered until the peas are tender. Taste them to ascertain when they are sufficiently cooked. Drain the water from them. Put them into a clean pan with a slice of butter, a little salt and a tea-spoonful of sugar, and toss them over the fire a minute or two, then serve. A sprig of mint is often boiled with peas; this is by some considered an improvement, and by others quite the reverse. Great care should be taken not to put much soda with peas. If the water is very hard, a tiny piece may be put in, but too much would quickly reduce them to a pulp. Time, according to the age and size: young green peas, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. per peck, when in full season. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward method whose one real problem is the clock: the timing here belongs to peas that have been in the pod for a while and grown starchy. Everything else in the entry still holds.
- Cooking timeFifteen to twenty minutes will turn any pea you can buy today into grey mush. Modern shelled garden peas need 2 to 4 minutes in boiling water, frozen peas about 2 minutes from frozen. The instruction to taste them rather than trust the time is the sound part of this recipe.
- Why the pan stays uncoveredVolatile acids released by the peas are driven off in the steam; trapped under a lid they dull the green. Plenty of fast-boiling water works the same way, keeping the temperature up and the cooking brief.
- The sodaSodium bicarbonate raises the pH and fixes the green colour, but it also breaks down cell walls and destroys thiamine — hence the warning about pulp. With short cooking times it serves no purpose; leave it out entirely even in hard water.
- Sorting by sizeWorth doing only if you have shelled your own from a mixed picking. Bought or frozen peas are already graded, and the ten-minute stagger is unnecessary.
- Butter, salt and sugarA "slice of butter" probably means something of the order of 1 to 2 tablespoons for this quantity. The teaspoon of sugar may have been compensation for peas that had lost sweetness after picking; with frozen peas, blanched soon after harvest, it is usually superfluous.
- MintBoil the sprig in the water rather than with the peas themselves if you want the perfume without leaves in the dish. Cassell's refusal to take a side on the question is fair — it is a matter of taste, and always was.
- A peckA peck is a dry measure of two gallons, so this means peas in the pod, not shelled. That is roughly 7 to 8 lb of pods, yielding perhaps 2 to 3 lb shelled. Serves three or four as the original states.
Green peas eaten fresh rather than dried were a luxury in England well into the seventeenth century and remained a marker of the season long after; the older use of the pea was as a dried pulse for pottage and pease pudding, which may be why "green peas" needed the adjective at all. By the time this book was compiled, market gardens ringing London and the railways that served them had made shelling peas a summer commonplace, at the eightpence a peck the entry quotes. A pea's sugars do convert to starch quickly after picking, which is presumably part of why the entry insists on shelling them just before cooking, though the recipe gives no reason. Mint with peas is generally described as an English rather than a French habit, and the disagreement noted here - an improvement to some, the reverse to others - is at least recorded in this entry itself.