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Peas, Green, Preserved
Take the peas when they are fully grown, but not old. Shell them, throw them into boiling water, and let them boil for ten minutes, then drain well, spread them out on tins, and put them in a cool oven once or twice to harden. When done, put them into paper bags, tie up securely, and hang in a dry warm room until wanted. Before using them, soak them in water for a little while, and put an ounce of butter into the water in which they are boiled.
This is drying, not canning — the peas are blanched, dehydrated hard, and stored dry, which is safe as long as they really are bone dry before they go into storage. The hinge is that last point: any residual moisture in a sealed bag means mould.
- "A cool oven"The book gives no temperature, and a nineteenth-century cool oven was hotter than we would choose for drying. For drying rather than baking, use the lowest setting your oven will hold, with the door propped open a crack so moisture escapes. A dehydrator does the same job with less fuss, typically over several hours.
- Cut the blanchTen minutes in boiling water is long enough to cook the peas through. Two to three minutes is enough to set the colour and halt enzyme action, followed by an ice-water plunge before draining.
- "Put them in a cool oven once or twice"The book expects more than one short session. Modern practice is one long continuous low-temperature run, spread in a single layer, stirring once or twice so the peas dry evenly.
- Judging "hard"A properly dried pea is shrivelled, dark, and shatters rather than dents when pressed with a knife blade. If it is leathery or gives at all, it is not finished.
- StoragePaper bags hung in a warm room worked in a house with dry air and no plastic. Glass jars or sealed bags in a cool dark cupboard keep them a year; check for condensation in the first week and re-dry if any appears.
- Soaking and cooking"a little while" is optimistic for peas dried this hard. Give them several hours or overnight in cold water, then simmer 20-40 minutes depending on size and age, with the ounce of butter (about 2 tablespoons) as the original directs.
- YieldTwo pounds of peas in the pod gives something under a pound shelled, and a few ounces once dried: enough to serve three or four after rehydrating.
Drying was the oldest way to hold a green vegetable through winter, and peas took to it better than most: the mature seed is already built to dry down and store, so the cook is only hurrying along what the plant does by itself. The household of the 1870s and 80s was still expected to manage its own preserving, and a warm dry room where paper bags could hang was a normal fixture. The instruction to add butter to the cooking water may be read as a small acknowledgement that dried peas never quite return to the sweetness of fresh; commercial canned and bottled peas, and later frozen, made the whole exercise optional, and it survives now mainly among gardeners with a glut.</p>