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Stewed Green Peas
Shell a peck of young peas, put them into a bowl with plenty of cold water and 2 ounces of butter, work them well with the fingers to make the peas stick together, and then drain them in a colander. Put the peas into a stewpan, with half a dozen young onions, 2 cabbage-lettuces cut into small pieces, a handful of parsley, a teaspoonful of powdered sugar, and a little salt. Cover the saucepan closely, and let its contents stew gently over a slow fire for about half an hour. If the lettuces and peas do not yield sufficient water a tablespoonful may be added, but if they are simmered gently this will in all probability be unnecessary. Shake the stewpan occasionally, that all may be equally cooked. Mix 2 ounces of butter smoothly with a dessertspoonful of flour, and when the peas are tender put the mixture into the saucepan with them. Shake them over the fire for three or four minutes until the butter is melted, then turn them upon a hot dish, and serve immediately. If preferred, 1 egg beaten up with 1 tablespoonful of water may be substituted for the butter.
This is the French method of stewing peas in their own moisture with lettuce and spring onions, and it works only if the pan stays shut and the heat stays low. The one thing to get right is the water: there should be almost none, so the peas steam in what the lettuce releases.
- A peck of peasA peck of unshelled peas is 8 quarts of pods, roughly 7-8 lb, which shells out to somewhere around 2.5-3 lb (8-10 cups) of peas. That is a party-sized dish; a quarter of the recipe suits four to six people.
- Cabbage-lettuceThis means a soft-headed lettuce - butterhead, Boston or Bibb. Romaine works, iceberg does not; it is too watery and too bland to give the dish its sweetness.
- Young onionsSpring onions or scallions, used whole with a few inches of green, not dry storage onions. Six of them is a generous handful.
- Working the butter inThe recipe's stated reason for working the peas with the fingers in cold water and butter is to make them stick together; the butter coats them. Use cold water and cold hands, or the butter smears rather than clings.
- A slow fireThe lowest setting your burner will hold, with a heat diffuser if you have one. Anything brisker drives off the lettuce water and scorches the peas at the bottom before the top layer softens.
- TimingHalf an hour suits peas starchier than most sold today, though this recipe itself calls for young peas. Modern shelled peas cook well inside half an hour and frozen ones faster still; taste early and stop when they crush easily but still hold shape.
- DessertspoonfulTwo teaspoons. The butter-and-flour paste is a beurre manié and should be stirred in off the boil, then shaken over gentle heat until it thickens the small amount of liquid into a gloss.
- The egg finishIf you use the beaten egg instead of the flour paste, pull the pan off the heat first and shake it in, returning it only briefly. Direct heat will scramble it into threads.
Peas stewed with lettuce, spring onions and a pinch of sugar is petits pois à la française, and the fashion for very young green peas is generally traced to the French court of the late seventeenth century, where their arrival each spring was reported as a minor event. The technique is a form of dry braising: the lettuce is there less as a vegetable than as a source of moisture, wilting down to supply the small amount of liquid the peas need so that none of their sweetness leaches into a pot of water. English and American household compilers reprinted the method, often without the French name, at a time when the commoner English treatment was to boil peas in salted water with mint. The offered substitution of a beaten egg for the finishing butter is one of two endings given for the same dish, a habit common in household collections.