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Peas
A no less famous woman than Madame Maintenon of the court of Louis XIV. is said to have written concerning peas: "The impatience to eat them, the pleasure to have eaten them, and the delight to eat them again, are the three points our princes talk about."
Like all green vegetables peas should be as fresh from the vines as possible; "an hour from the vines to the table" is the time one authority gives. Since this is possible only when one has a kitchen garden to draw from during the season, the best one can do is to take all possible care to preserve the original freshness and flavor. Green peas should never be washed after shelling as many cooks do. There is no more need for washing than for washing a banana after peeling, for the pea is perfectly protected by the pod from any dust or migratory germ. Wash the pods thoroughly before shelling, however. A few of the pods may then be boiled in with the peas to add to the flavor. When peas have been too long picked and the pods are at all withered they may be soaked for an hour in cold water, and shelled immediately before cooking. They should be put into boiling water enough to cover, and kept boiling steadily, uncovered, to retain their color. When peas are full grown a little sugar added while boiling frequently improves the flavor. French and English cooks frequently add a sprig of mint to the peas while cooking, epicures affirming that there is a natural affinity between the two. In using canned peas the mistake should not be made of cooking them in the water in which they were canned. It should always be drained off and the peas cooked in fresh boiling water.
To boil young peas, cook without salt until tender, about fifteen minutes; then add salt and cook five minutes longer; drain and serve.
Most of this entry is advice rather than instruction, but the closing lines give a working method for boiled peas. That method is the one part that modern practice has firmly overturned.
- Cut the time hardTwenty minutes of steady boiling will turn young shelled peas grey and mealy. Fresh garden peas need three to five minutes in boiling water; frozen peas need two to three, counted from the moment the water returns to the boil.
- Salt from the startThe instruction to cook without salt and add it at the end belongs to an era of much older, starchier peas. Salting the water at the beginning seasons them through and does nothing to toughen them at these short times.
- Uncovered is rightBoiling uncovered lets the volatile acids escape rather than condensing back onto the peas, which is what keeps the green bright. This piece of advice still holds, though at three minutes it matters much less than it did at twenty.
- Washing after shellingThe claim that the pod seals the peas from anything is optimistic, but the practical point stands: shelled peas absorb water and lose sugars if left to soak. Wash the pods, shell, and cook straight away.
- Pods in the potA handful of clean pods boiled alongside does add sweetness. Fish them out before serving, or simmer them separately for fifteen minutes and use the strained liquid as the cooking water.
- Sugar and mintSugar was a corrective for peas that had sat too long and converted their sugars to starch. Supermarket frozen peas are blanched within hours of picking and rarely need it. A sprig of mint in the water, or chopped mint and butter afterwards, remains worth doing.
- Canned peasDraining the packing liquid is still sound advice, but canned peas are already fully cooked. Warm them through in a little water or butter for a minute or two rather than boiling them again.
- YieldA pound of peas in the pod gives roughly a cup of shelled peas, enough for two as a side dish. Reckon on two to three pounds of pods for four people.
The quotation that opens this entry is one of the most repeated anecdotes in vegetable cookery: at the court of Louis XIV in the 1690s the newly fashionable early green pea became an obsession among courtiers, and the remark about impatience, pleasure and delight is traditionally attributed to Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon, the king's secretly married second wife. Small, sweet, immature peas eaten green rather than dried are usually said to have reached the French court from Italy in the mid-seventeenth century; they were expensive and briefly available, which is precisely what made them a status food. By the time this book was compiled, canning and rail freight had made peas an everyday item, and the writer's real anxiety has shifted: the entry is less about scarcity than about the gap between a pea an hour off the vine and a pea that has travelled. That is also why so much of the advice concerns damage control — soaking withered pods, adding sugar to peas grown too starchy — problems that later commercial quick freezing largely solved.