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PEAS, GREEN, BOILED (Dr. Kitchener's recipe)

"Young green peas well dressed are one of the most delicious delicacies of the vegetable kingdom. They must be young; it is equally indispensable that they be fresh gathered, and cooked as soon as they are shelled, for they soon lose both their colour and sweetness. If you wish to feast upon peas in perfection, you must have them gathered the same day they are dressed, and put on to boil within half an hour after they are shelled. Pass them through a riddle, i.e. a coarse sieve, which is made for the purpose of separating them. This precaution is necessary, for large and small peas cannot be boiled together, as the former will take more time than the latter. For a peck of peas, set on a saucepan with a gallon of water in it; when it boils, put in your peas with a table-spoonful of salt; skim it well, keep them boiling quick from twenty to thirty minutes, according to their age and size; the best way to judge of their being done enough, and indeed the only way to make sure of cooking them to and not beyond the point of perfection, or, as the pea-eaters say, of 'boiling them to a bubble,' is to take them out with a spoon and taste them. When they are done enough, drain them on a hair sieve. If you like them buttered, put them into a pie-dish, divide some butter into small bits, and lay them on the peas; put another dish over them, and turn them over and over; this will melt the butter through them; but as all people do not like buttered peas, you had better send them to table plain as they come out of the saucepan, with melted butter in a sauce tureen. It is usual to boil some mint with the peas; but if you wish to garnish the peas with mint, boil a few sprigs in a saucepan by themselves. A peck of young peas will not yield more than enough for a couple of hearty pea-eaters; when the pods are full, it may serve for three. Never think of purchasing peas ready-shelled, for the cogent reasons assigned in the first part of this recipe."