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PEAS, GREEN (a French mode of cooking)
Melt one ounce of fresh butter in a saucepan. When it is dissolved without being the least coloured, throw in a quart of peas. Shake them over the fire for a minute or two, then pour over them as much boiling water or weak stock as will barely cover them, add half a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, the heart of a lettuce finely shredded, three young onions, and a small sprig of parsley. Simmer gently until the peas are tender. Take the saucepan from the fire for a minute, and in order to thicken the sauce stir in the well-beaten yolks of three eggs. The peas must not boil up after the eggs are added. Serve the peas on a hot dish with the sauce poured over them. Time, half an hour. Probable cost of peas, 8d. per peck, when in full season. Sufficient for four or five persons.
PEAS, GREEN (a French mode of cooking), another way. Take two quarts of green peas, and put them in a panful of cold water with three ounces of butter. Work the peas in the water, so that their surface may be equally smeared with the butter, that they may adhere together. Drain off the water, take out the peas by handfuls, and transfer them to a colander. Stew them over a moderate fire with some green onions and a bunch of parsley; dust a little flour over them, and stir carefully; next pour over the peas just enough boiling water to cover them. Boil fast till the water is evaporated, then put in a lump of sugar, moistened, that it may be more quickly dissolved, and a little salt. Have ready mixed two ounces of butter with some flour; stir it into the peas, and let it be equally distributed among them. Then serve.
Two versions of petits pois à la française, one finished with an egg liaison, the other with kneaded butter. Both assume small, freshly shelled young peas rather than the large starchy ones sold late in the season.
- The hinge: the yolks must not boilIn the first version the pan comes off the heat before the beaten yolks go in, and it never returns to a boil. Above a bare simmer the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks into curds and green water. Stir the yolks with a spoonful of the hot cooking liquid first, then pour that back into the pan and swirl over the lowest possible heat until it coats the spoon.
- A quart of peasThis means shelled peas, something like 1 1/4-1 1/2 lb / 570-680 g, which is perhaps 3 lb of peas in the pod. The peck price quoted at the end refers to unshelled pods bought at market; a peck is two gallons dry measure, and a peck of pods weighs somewhere in the region of 7-9 lb.
- Half an hour is too longHalf an hour -- The half-hour given is the recipe's total time, not the simmering time. Young fresh peas are tender in 8-12 minutes of gentle simmering, and thawed frozen peas need 3-5. Judge by the peas, not the clock, or they will go grey and mealy.
- The pepperHalf a teaspoon of pepper to a quart of peas is assertive by modern taste and will dominate the lettuce. A quarter teaspoon of white pepper is closer to what the dish wants; the salt quantity is about right.
- Three young onionsSpring onions or scallions, trimmed and used whole or halved lengthways, green tops included. They are aromatics rather than a vegetable in their own right and can be lifted out before serving if you prefer.
- "Weak stock"An unsalted or lightly salted light stock, poured boiling so the peas do not stall. Use barely enough to cover; the liquid is meant to reduce into a sauce, not to be drained away.
- The second method's butteringRolling the peas in cold water with butter coats each one in a film of fat; the reason the recipe itself gives is that it makes them 'adhere together'. The instruction to transfer them to a colander and then stew them is loosely worded: drain in the colander, then tip the buttered peas into a pan over moderate heat.
- Sugar and finishing butter"A lump of sugar, moistened" is a lump of loaf or cube sugar dampened so it dissolves fast, perhaps a teaspoon's worth. The butter "mixed with some flour" is beurre manie, kneaded butter and flour; the recipe gives no flour quantity, so work the 2 oz / 55 g soft butter with a couple of teaspoons of flour and stir it in in pieces to bind the little sauce left in the pan.
- YieldThe first version serves four to five as a side dish; the second, at two quarts, serves eight to ten.
Peas stewed in butter with lettuce, spring onions and parsley is the dish French cookery knows as petits pois a la francaise, and nineteenth-century English cookery books commonly flag it as the French way, the more usual English habit being to boil peas in salted water and drain them. The two versions here show two classic finishes: an egg-yolk liaison, a long-established method of thickening in French practice, and beurre manie, kneaded butter and flour. The price of peas is quoted by the peck when in full season, a reminder that green peas were a summer glut rather than a year-round staple.