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Peas, Green, Stewed, with Ham and Lettuces
Shell a peck of young green peas and prepare them according to the directions given in the last recipe. Put them into a stewpan, with the hearts of two cabbage-lettuces finely shredded, a large onion cut into thin slices, a handful of parsley, and half a pound of ham or bacon cut into small pieces. Cover the saucepan closely, and let its contents stew until the peas are tender. If necessary add a table-spoonful of water or stock. Shake the saucepan over the fire occasionally to prevent burning. When the peas are cooked enough take out the ham and onion, put in two ounces of butter mixed smoothly with a dessert-spoonful of flour and a table-spoonful of cream. A sprig or two of mint may be stewed with the peas if the flavour be liked. Simmer gently for four minutes, and serve as hot as possible. Time, about half an hour to stew the peas. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A dry braise in the French style, where the peas cook in their own moisture with almost no added liquid. Two things decide the outcome: a genuinely tight lid, and stopping while the peas are still sweet.
- A peck of peasA peck is a dry measure of eight quarts. In the pod that is roughly 8 lb, yielding somewhere near 2 1/2 to 3 lb of shelled peas, which is more than four or five people will eat as a side dish. For four servings use about 3 lb of pods, or about 1 lb (3 cups) of shelled or frozen peas.
- Cabbage-lettucesNot cabbage, but the old name for round, soft-headed lettuce: butterhead, Boston or Bibb. Use the pale inner hearts of two heads, shredded fine; romaine will do but is coarser.
- Spoon sizesA Victorian dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons, a tablespoonful about 1 tablespoon as now. The butter and flour together make a small beurre manirenough with cream to thicken the scant liquor at the end.
- The tablespoon of waterThat is not a misprint. Fresh-shelled peas and shredded lettuce release enough liquid to steam themselves if the pan is heavy and the lid close-fitting; add water only if you hear the pan going dry.
- TimingThe recipe allows about half an hour, which suits freshly picked garden peas of mixed size. Modern market peas and frozen peas want 8-15 minutes at most; taste at five-minute intervals and stop while they still have shape.
- Frozen peasThey work well here, but add them only after the lettuce, onion and ham have softened over low heat for ten minutes or so, then give them five minutes. Added at the start they collapse to mush.
- The hamHalf a pound of ham or bacon is flavouring, lifted out before serving. Use a piece of unsmoked gammon or a thick bacon slab; heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the peas. Salt only at the end.
- FinishingMash the butter and flour to a smooth paste before it goes in, stir it through off a rolling boil, then simmer four minutes to cook out the flour. Serve at once; reheating dulls the colour.
This is the English kitchen's version of the French petits pois ra l'tuve, in which peas are stewed with shredded lettuce, onion and herbs in their own moisture rather than boiled in water pa method generally traced to seventeenth-century French court cookery, when new sweet garden peas were a luxury much prized at Versailles. The costing of 1s. 3d. and the casual call for a peck of pods both belong to a household with a kitchen garden or a daily greengrocer, where peas came in bulk and in the pod, and shelling them was somebody's afternoon.