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One of Green Mint and Parsley
One ounce of castor Sugar.
Salt, and one pint of Water.
Half a pound of lean Ham.
One ounce of Butter.
Half an ounce of Flour.
Fleurons (small half-moons of Puff Pastry).
Put the peas into a pint of cold water with the onion, mint, parsley, sugar, and a little salt; cover them, and let them cook gently for from twenty to thirty minutes over a slow fire; then take out the herbs, pour off a little of the liquor, and boil down the rest. Fry the chopped ham in an ounce of butter and sprinkle in the flour; add this to the peas. Toss them all well together over the fire, dish up, and garnish with fleurons. Serve very hot.
A pea and ham dish whose ingredient list has been cut off mid-line — the title itself is the tail end of "one sprig of green mint and parsley" — so a little reconstruction is needed before you start.
- The missing quantitiesThe list as printed begins in the middle: the peas, the onion and the mint and parsley sprigs all belong to lines that have been lost. The pint of water and the half pound of ham suggest something in the region of a quart of shelled peas with one small onion, but the original amounts cannot be recovered.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. Granulated works identically here, since it dissolves in the cooking liquor. The ounce is about 2 tablespoons and it is there to flatter older, starchier peas — cut it to a teaspoon with sweet modern peas or frozen petits pois.
- Cooking timeTwenty to thirty minutes suits large, older peas. Fresh young peas are done in 5 to 8 minutes, frozen in 3. Overcooked peas go grey-green and mealy, which is the main way this dish fails.
- Reducing the liquorPour off part of the cooking water and boil the remainder down hard before the ham and flour go in. What you want at the end is a glaze clinging to the peas, not a soup. The half ounce of flour is a very light thickener and will not rescue an over-wet pan.
- The hamHalf a pound of lean cooked ham, chopped small and fried in butter until the edges colour. Flour sprinkled onto the hot butter needs a minute of cooking before it joins the peas, or the finished dish tastes pasty.
- FleuronsSmall crescents cut from puff pastry with a round cutter, egg-washed and baked at 425F until risen and brown, then stood around the edge of the dish. Ready-rolled puff pastry is fine. Bake them ahead; they must be dry and crisp, and they soften within minutes of meeting the peas.
- Yield and placingEnough for four to six as a garnish or accompaniment.
Peas stewed in a very little water with an onion, sugar and a bundle of herbs, then finished with butter, is the English kitchen's version of the French petits pois à la française, which appears in professional cookery books throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The additions here — chopped lean ham fried in butter, a dusting of flour to bind, and puff-pastry fleurons stood around the dish — are the marks of "high class" service, where a vegetable was expected to arrive garnished and glazed rather than simply drained. Fleurons were a standard trim for fish and entrée dishes of the period.</br>The mint is the English signature: French versions rely on lettuce and onion, and mint with green peas is a long-standing British habit, though the reason for the pairing is not documented.