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Peas, Fricassee Of
Melt one and a half ounces of butter in a stewpan, add one ounce of flour, mix well without discolouring. Pour in half a pint of boiling white stock, add a pinch of pepper, and a tea-spoonful of castor sugar. Simmer for five minutes, put in the peas, either fresh or preserved, and shake them well; warm thoroughly, add three table-spoonfuls of boiled ham, tongue, or bacon, cut into very small pieces; garnish with croutons, and serve hot.
A velouté-based creamed pea dish with a little cured meat stirred through. The original gives no pea quantity, so the sauce ratio is your guide: half a pint of stock and an ounce each of butter and flour will coat about 1 lb of shelled peas comfortably.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or a scant 1¼ US cups. The finished sauce should be pourable, not stiff; loosen with more stock if it tightens.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. Granulated works identically here since it dissolves in hot sauce. The teaspoonful is there to lift older, starchier peas and can be halved for sweet modern frozen ones.
- White stockAn unroasted veal or chicken stock, kept pale so the sauce stays ivory. Low-sodium chicken stock is the practical substitute, and matters because the ham or bacon will add salt at the end.
- Without discolouringThis is the hinge. Cook the flour and butter over low heat for two or three minutes only, until it smells faintly of biscuit but has taken no colour. Any browning turns the finished dish grey-beige.
- Preserved peasAt the time this meant bottled or tinned peas, already fully cooked and often quite soft. Frozen peas are the closer modern equivalent in texture and need only two to three minutes in the hot sauce; fresh shelled peas should be boiled separately until just tender before going in.
- Warm thoroughlyTake this literally rather than as a simmer. Peas held in a hot sauce for more than a few minutes lose colour and go mealy, so bring everything to temperature and serve.
- Three tablespoonfuls of hamRoughly 1½ oz of cooked meat, diced small. Bacon should be rendered crisp first and drained, or its fat will slick the sauce.
- YieldOn the assumed pound of peas, roughly four as a vegetable side, or two as a light supper dish with the croutons.
Fricassee normally means poultry or veal cut up and finished in a pale sauce, and applying the word to peas is characteristic of Victorian cookery writing, which borrowed French sauce vocabulary freely for vegetable dishes to give them standing on the menu. The sauce itself is a plain velouté, the flour-and-stock foundation reused across many entries in the book. The instruction to use peas "either fresh or preserved" shows that tinned peas were by this date acceptable in a serious cookbook, though the pinch of sugar may suggest the preserved ones needed help. Scraps of ham or tongue turned a side dish into something more substantial.