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Cream of Green Pea Soup
1 pint green peas 1 quart water 1 pint milk 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 1 slice onion Wash the peas, and cook in the boiling water with he onion until soft; then mash through a colander, and add to the liquid in which they are cooked. Make a white sauce of the butter, flour and milk, and add to the mashed peas. Add the salt and sugar, and cook five minutes.
A plain cream soup of the American cooking-school type: vegetable purée plus a thin white sauce. Two things decide whether it tastes green or grey — how long the peas cook, and whether the soup boils after the milk goes in.
- The peasA pint measure of shelled peas is roughly 10 to 12 ounces, which is about two cups of frozen peas or 2 to 2½ pounds of peas in the pod. Frozen peas work well here and are usually sweeter than fresh supermarket pods.
- "Until soft" is shorter than it soundsYoung or frozen peas are tender in 5 to 8 minutes. Recipes of this period often assumed more mature shelled peas that needed longer; a long boil dulls the colour to olive and flattens the flavour.
- SievingThe colander step means pressing the peas through with a wooden spoon to leave the skins behind. A blender is faster but will not remove the hulls — pass the purée through a fine sieve afterwards if you want the smooth texture the recipe intends.
- The white sauceTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour to a pint of milk is a thin sauce, correct for soup. Cook the roux a minute before adding milk, and add the milk gradually or it will lump.
- Do not let it boil at the endOnce the milk sauce joins the pea liquid, hold the soup just below a simmer for the final five minutes. A hard boil in a floury milk soup scorches on the bottom and can curdle it.
- The slice of onionOne slice is a flavouring, not an ingredient — it goes in with the peas and is meant to be discarded or sieved out. Do not substitute a whole chopped onion unless you want an onion soup.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt for five cups of soup is modest; taste at the end, and the teaspoon of sugar is worth keeping even with sweet frozen peas, as it lifts the pea flavour against the milk.
- YieldAbout five cups, or four servings as a first course. It thickens on standing; loosen with milk or the pea water when reheating.
Cream soups built on a white sauce were the standard formula of the American cooking schools in the decades either side of 1900 — Fannie Farmer and her contemporaries taught the same butter-flour-milk base for asparagus, celery, corn and pea soups alike, which made a single lesson serve a dozen dishes. A book titled Meatless Cookery belongs to a particular moment: household guides urging Americans to cut back on meat, at a time when meat and wheat conservation was official policy. Peas, dried or fresh, carried much of that weight because they were thought to supply protein cheaply and stored well, and a cream of pea soup let a cook put something substantial at the head of the meal without touching the butcher.