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Mint-Glazed Carrots and Peas
Signa E. Nelson. 3 medium sized carrots 1/2 C butter ½ C sugar 1 T mint sauce 1 can peas Salt Boil carrots in small amount of salted water fifteen minutes. Drain, add butter and sugar. Cook slowly until soft and glazed. Add mint sauce. Heat and drain peas (save liquor for stock). Turn peas on hot serving dish. Surround with carrots. Pour glazing liquor over peas. 1 doz. small beets 1/2 C sugar 1/2 T cornstarch
A church-supper vegetable dish built around the old habit of glazing carrots hard in butter and sugar. Two things need sorting before you cook: the sugar quantity and the stray ingredients at the end.
- The sugar is almost certainly a typoThe sugar looks like a misprint -- a cup and a half of sugar to three carrots would give you candy, not a glaze, and the half cup of butter is generous for the same quantity. A tablespoon or two of sugar with the butter is nearer the result the method describes; add more only if the glaze is thin.
- The last line belongs to another recipeThe last line does not belong to this recipe -- "1 doz. small beets, 1/2 C sugar, 1/2 T cornstarch" has no place in the method given and appears to have run in from an adjacent entry. Ignore it here.
- Mint sauceThis means the English condiment: chopped mint steeped in vinegar with a little sugar, sold beside the horseradish. It is sharp, not sweet like a mint jelly, and the vinegar is what keeps the glaze from cloying. If you substitute jelly, cut the sugar further and add a splash of white wine vinegar.
- Cut the carrots to match"3 medium sized carrots" left whole will not glaze evenly in a shallow pan. Cut them into batons or thick coins so they finish at the same moment and present neatly as a border around the peas.
- Fifteen minutes is a starting pointBoil only until barely tender, since they cook again in the butter and sugar. Overshoot at the boiling stage and they collapse while glazing.
- Canned peasCan sizes have changed, so treat "1 can" loosely; a modern 15 oz can drains to roughly 1½ cups, while period cans were often larger. They are already fully cooked; warm them through and no more. Frozen peas work, but you then lose the "liquor" the recipe asks you to pour over them, so reserve a few tablespoons of their cooking water instead.
- Save the liquorKeeping the pea liquid for stock is ordinary kitchen thrift, still worth doing. It is salty, so account for that in whatever you add it to.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; three carrots and a can of peas will stretch to about three or four as a side dish. Use a wide skillet rather than a deep pan so the glaze reduces instead of steaming.
Community cookbooks of this kind were assembled from members' handwritten cards, which is why an entry carries a contributor's name at the top and why one recipe can run into the next in the typesetting. Glazing root vegetables in butter and sugar is a French technique, but the mint sauce here points to English cookery, where vinegared mint has long been the standard accompaniment to spring lamb and new peas; Signa Nelson's dish is essentially that pairing rearranged as a vegetable plate. Canned peas were a widely available year-round staple in American kitchens for most of the first half of the twentieth century, and a recipe that combines fresh carrots with canned peas is one written for a cook who wanted the colour of a garden dish in a month when the garden had nothing in it.