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Peas, Green, Puree Of
Throw the peas into as much boiling water as will cover them. Season with salt and sugar, and when they are quite soft drain in a colander, and press them through a fine hair sieve. Put the pulp into a stewpan, with one-eighth of its bulk of good stock or white sauce, or, if preferred, with three or four ounces of butter, and a little pepper and salt. Stir the mixture over the fire until it is very hot, and serve immediately. This puree is used with lamb cutlets, and various other meats. Time, half an hour. Probable cost of peas, when in full season, 6d. per peck. Sufficient, a peck for four or five persons.
A straightforward vegetable purée, but two things in it are of their time: the half-hour boil and the peck of peas in the pod. Both need translating before you start.
- A peck of peasA peck is a dry measure of two imperial gallons — very roughly 7 to 9 lb of peas in the pod, which shells out to somewhere around 2 1/2 to 3 lb of peas, depending on the pods. For four or five people, about 2 lb of shelled or frozen peas is a sensible working figure.
- Cooking time"Time, half an hour" belongs to garden peas picked large and starchy, and to a period when vegetables were cooked until they surrendered. Young shelled peas are soft enough to sieve in 5 to 8 minutes; frozen peas need 3. Overboiling turns the purée khaki and flattens the flavour.
- Hair sieveA fine sieve of woven horsehair, used with a wooden mushroom or the back of a spoon. A drum sieve or a mouli food mill does the same job; a blender is faster but leaves the skins in, so pass the result through a fine mesh sieve if you want the texture the recipe intends.
- Salt and sugar in the waterThe sugar is not sentiment — it props up the sweetness of peas that have been off the vine for a day or two. A teaspoon per pot is enough.
- One-eighth of its bulkMeasure the pur e, then add an eighth of that volume in stock or white sauce: about 2 1/2 fl oz of liquid per imperial pint of pur e. This is a stiff pur e meant to hold its shape beside a cutlet, not a soup.
- The butter versionThree or four ounces of butter into this quantity of purée is rich but correct for the period; beat it in off direct heat, in pieces, so it emulsifies rather than splits. Half that amount gives a lighter result.
- ServingReheat and serve at once, as the recipe directs. Pea pur e dulls in colour on standing, so make it last and spoon it straight onto the plate.
Pur\u of nineteenth-century English cookery's debt to France: a vegetable cooked, sieved, bound with stock or butter, and used as a bed or accompaniment rather than as a dish in its own right. The method is one meant to be generalised urnnip, carrot, celeriac or dried peas, and the reader is expected to carry it across. The pairing with lamb cutlets is often said to be a fixture of Victorian and Edwardian menus, and the sixpence-a-peck price is a reminder that green peas were a brief, cheap, intensely seasonal glut in the summer months, shelled by the bowlful in domestic kitchens before frozen peas made the labour and the season irrelevant.