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A French Mode of Cooking Green Peas
Melt one ounce of fresh butter in a saucepan. When it is dissolved without being the least colored, throw in a quart of peas. Shake them over the fire for a minute or two, then pour over them as much boiling water or weak stock as will barely cover them; add half a teaspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of pepper, the heart of a lettuce finely shred, 3 young onions, and a small sprig of parsley. Simmer gently until the peas are tender. Take the saucepan from the fire for a minute, and in order to thicken the sauce stir in the well-beaten yolks of 3 eggs. The peas must not boil up after the eggs are added. Serve the peas on a hot dish with the sauce poured over them. Time, half an hour. Sufficient for four or five persons.
This is the classic French braise of peas with lettuce and spring onions, finished with an egg-yolk liaison. Two details govern success: the heat when the yolks go in, and a much shorter cooking time than the original allows.
- The hinge: the liaisonOnce the beaten yolks go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer or it will scramble into curds. Pull the pan fully off the heat, temper the yolks with a ladle of the hot cooking liquid first, then stir the mixture back in and let it thicken on residual heat only.
- A quart of peasMost likely a quart measure of shelled peas, that is 4 cups, roughly 1 1/4 lb, which takes about 3 lb of peas in the pod. Frozen petits pois can be substituted by volume.
- Time, half an hourThis is the total time for the dish, and the recipe in fact says to simmer only 'until the peas are tender'. Young fresh peas are tender in 6 to 10 minutes and frozen ones in 3 to 4; overcooking turns them grey and mealy. Judge by the peas, not the clock.
- 3 young onionsSpring onions or scallions, trimmed and used whole or halved lengthwise, greens included. Not mature dry onions, which are too assertive here.
- The heart of a lettuceA butterhead type such as Bibb or Boston, shredded fine. It melts into the liquid and gives the sauce its sweetness and body, so it is not optional garnish.
- Half a teaspoonful of pepperHeavy by current taste for a quart of peas. A quarter teaspoon of white pepper is closer to what the dish wants, with more added at the end if needed.
- Barely cover themUse as little boiling water or light stock as possible. The liquid becomes the sauce, and a flooded pan gives a thin one that the three yolks cannot pull together.
- YieldFour to five as a side dish, as stated. It does not reheat well, since the egg-thickened sauce will break.
This is petits pois \ or peas cooked "\ la fran\aise," the standard French treatment of early summer peas: butter, a little liquid, shredded lettuce, spring onions and a herb sprig, with the peas braised rather than boiled and drained. The lettuce is the signature, contributing moisture and a faint sweetness as it collapses. Finishing with egg yolks off the heat is the ordinary French liaison, the same technique behind a blanquette or a fricass\e sauce, and versions of it appear in English-language compilations of the late nineteenth century. Such books sometimes labelled dishes as "a French mode," setting them against the plainer Anglo-American habit of boiling vegetables in salted water and serving them with a lump of butter.