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Cream of Pea Soup
Turn off the liquor from a can of peas, and pour enough water over the peas to cover them well. Let the peas soak for half an hour, drain; put them into a saucepan with a pint of water, and boil until they become soft. Rub through a colander and add a teaspoonful of sugar. Cook in another saucepan 1 teaspoonful of butter with 1 of flour. Pour in a pint of rich milk, and when it is thickened add the pea puree. Cook for a minute, season to taste, the turn into a heated tureen. Drop a handful of dice of fried bread on the soup just before serving.
A straightforward canned-pea cream soup built on a small white roux. The proportions are lean by modern standards, so expect a thin soup unless you adjust.
- Rinsing the peasDraining and soaking the canned peas washes away the tinny, salty packing liquor, which is presumably the point of the step. Thirty minutes is ample; a quick rinse in a colander does nearly as well with most canned peas sold today.
- QuantitiesThe recipe does not specify a can size; a standard 15 oz can gives about 10 oz drained peas, which with a pint of water and a pint of milk makes roughly four small servings. Canned peas are already cooked, so they will soften in 10-15 minutes rather than needing a long boil.
- The roux is undersizedA teaspoon each of butter and flour will barely thicken a pint of milk. For a soup with body, use a tablespoon of each, cooked together two minutes without browning before the milk goes in.
- "Rich milk"In recipes of this period this generally means milk with the cream in it, or milk with cream added. Whole milk, or whole milk with a few tablespoons of cream, is the practical modern equivalent.
- SievingRubbing through a colander leaves skins behind and gives a coarse puree. A blender followed by a fine sieve gives a smoother result; skip the sieve if you want the texture the original intends.
- Adding the pureeCombine off the heat or over low heat and cook only a minute as directed. Pea puree scorches easily against the bottom of the pan and long cooking dulls the green colour to khaki.
- Croutons"Dice of fried bread" are bread cubes fried in butter until crisp. Add them at the table, not in the tureen, or they soften within a minute.
- SeasoningSalt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg suit it. The teaspoon of sugar reads as a correction for canned peas' flatness and is worth keeping.