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VEGETABLE SOUP, SUMMER (another way)
Take a pint of green peas which have grown too old to be boiled in the ordinary way. Put them into a stewpan with a handful of the shells, a large onion sliced, a sprig of mint, and a quart of stock or water. Let them boil till tender, and rub them through a sieve. Dissolve an ounce of butter in another stewpan; throw into this two sliced onions, a large cucumber cut into dice, two lettuces cut small, and half a pint of freshly-shelled young peas. Pour upon the vegetables as much stock as will cover them, and let them boil till tender. Stir in the puree, season the soup with pepper and salt, boil all together, and serve. If necessary, a table-spoonful of spinach or parsley-juice may be added to improve the colour of the soup.
A two-stage summer pea soup: a puree from overgrown peas forms the base, then a fresh garnish of vegetables is stewed separately and combined. The point of the method is that the tough old peas do the thickening while the young ones keep their sweetness.
- The hingeDo not merge the two stages. Once the puree goes in, bring it just to a boil and serve; extended cooking turns the young peas and lettuce grey-green and flat.
- Old peasPeas "grown too old to be boiled" are starchy and mealy rather than sweet, which is why they sieve into a thick puree. Frozen peas are picked young and will not thicken the same way; use fresh mature shell peas from a market, or accept a thinner soup and finish it with a little potato or a beurre manie.
- QuantitiesMeasures here are imperial: a pint is 20 fl oz (about 2.5 US cups) and a quart 40 fl oz (about 5 cups). A pint of shelled peas weighs somewhere in the region of 12 oz; the half-pint of young peas is half that.
- The pod stockThe handful of shells is a real flavour step, not thrift for its own sake. Simmer them with the peas and onion, then discard them at the sieve; pea pods are fibrous and will not pass through.
- SievingA food mill or a coarse sieve with a wooden spoon gives the intended texture. A blender will emulsify the skins in and make the soup cloudy rather than velvety, so pass it after blending if you go that route.
- LettucesTwo heads of lettuce, shredded, cook down to very little; cos was among the lettuces in common use at the time. Romaine works; iceberg does not, as it goes watery without contributing flavour.
- ColouringSpinach or parsley juice was made by pounding the leaves and squeezing them through cloth. A tablespoon of very finely pureed blanched spinach stirred in off the heat does the same job, and only for colour.
- CucumberPeel and seed the cucumber before dicing; modern seedless cucumbers need only peeling.
Green pea soup in two grades of pea is an old English kitchen economy: peas go from sweet to starchy within days of picking, and a household with its own garden always had a surplus that had passed the point of being served plain with butter. Rather than waste them, English cookery books show the tough peas going into the puree and the tender ones reserved for the finish, so that a single crop produced both body and garnish. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in late-Victorian London for middle-class households running on stock pots and seasonal produce, prints several variants of the summer version under the same heading, and this one is marked "another way". The mint is not decorative but standard English practice with peas, generally traced to the same tradition that puts a sprig in the pot when boiling them.