Pea Soup
Soak one pint of split peas in water for twelve hours; drain off the water, put the peas into a saucepan with three pints cold water, one-half pound bacon, two sprigs of dried mint, a bay leaf, some parsley, an onion stuck with one or two cloves, some whole pepper, and salt to taste. Let the whole boil three hours, then pass the puree through a hair sieve; make it hot again and serve with dice of bread fried in butter--Mrs. A.
A plain split-pea puree built on bacon and aromatics. The whole recipe hinges on the sieving step, which is what separates it from a bowl of stewed peas.
- QuantitiesOne pint of dry split peas is about 2 cups, roughly 14 oz; three pints of water is 6 cups. That ratio yields about 6 servings once the puree is loosened, and the soup thickens noticeably as it sits.
- Soaking is optional nowModern split peas are cleaner and more uniform than nineteenth-century stock and generally collapse in 45 to 60 minutes without any soak. Why the twelve-hour soak and the discarded water were specified is not stated here; skip it if you like, but keep the water at 3 pints either way.
- Three hours is too longThe peas will be a full puree in about an hour of gentle simmering, ninety minutes at most. On a modern burner the extra time mainly risks scorching the bottom and boiling away liquid, so cook to texture, not to the clock.
- The baconIn a Virginia book of this date, 'bacon' would most likely mean dry-salt-cured side meat, saltier and firmer than sliced breakfast bacon. A chunk of slab bacon, salt pork or a smoked ham hock is the right substitute, and it means you should salt only at the end.
- Hair sieveA horsehair sieve was the fine mesh of the period. A food mill, a conical strainer with a ladle, or a stick blender followed by a pass through a fine sieve all get there; the point is to leave the pea hulls behind. Fish out the bay leaf, cloves, whole peppercorns and bacon first.
- ReheatingAfter sieving, thin the puree if it has gone too thick, with a little water or some of the cooking liquid set aside beforehand, then bring it back to a bare simmer. It catches on the pan floor easily at this stage, so stir and keep the heat low.
- ServingThe fried bread dice are croutons: cubes of bread crisped in butter. Adding them at the table keeps them from softening. Shred a little of the cooked bacon back into the bowls if you want more than a background of smoke.
Split-pea soup with a piece of cured pork, mint and an onion stuck with cloves closely follows the English formula, and its presence in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) is a reminder how much of that book's "cookery" section descends from British household manuals rather than from anything distinctively Southern. What makes it Virginian is the bacon: dry-cured side meat and ham were the cheap, always-available seasoning in a state whose pork curing was a point of regional pride, and they turn up as the flavoring base for vegetables throughout the collection. Dried peas were winter provision food, cheap and storable, and mint is the old English pairing with peas of any kind, fresh or dried. The recipe is credited only to "Mrs. A." - Marion Cabell Tyree assembled the book from contributions by some 250 ladies of Virginia and neighboring states, many of them identified by initials alone.