Pea Soup
1 pint canned peas 1 pint water 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon flour 1 slice onion 1 sprig mint Drain the peas through colander. Add the water. Rub together the flour and butter and moisten with a little water. Add this to the peas, and cook with the onion and mint for about fifteen minutes. Season and server. Celery salt ma be substituted for the onion if desired.
A wartime-era meatless soup built entirely from pantry stock. It comes together in under twenty minutes, and the only real decisions are how much to purée and how much to thin it.
- Cans and quantitiesA pint of drained canned peas is the drained contents of one to two standard 15-oz cans, depending on the brand's fill. The recipe discards the canning liquid and replaces it with a pint of fresh water; if you want more body, keep a little of the liquid back.
- The thickeningFlour and butter rubbed together and slackened with water is beurre manié, stirred into hot liquid rather than cooked first as a roux. Add it in small pieces while whisking, or it will set into lumps. Fifteen minutes of simmering is enough to cook out the raw flour taste.
- TextureAs written this is a brothy soup with whole peas. Canned peas purée easily, so a blender or a few passes with a stick blender gives the smooth green soup most people now expect from the name. Sieve afterwards if you want it very fine.
- Mint and onionA single slice of onion and one sprig of mint are meant to perfume, not flavour outright. Fish the mint out before serving so it does not go grey and bitter. Fresh mint is worth the trip; dried mint in this quantity tastes dusty.
- SeasoningOne teaspoon of salt for a quart of soup is on the low side, especially since canned peas vary widely in their own salt. Taste at the end. A grind of pepper and a squeeze of lemon lift it considerably.
- Celery salt substitutionIf you use celery salt in place of the onion, reduce the added salt accordingly, and consider adding it near the end of cooking.
- YieldAbout a quart, which is two generous bowls or four small cups before a main course.
Books published under the banner of meatless cookery multiplied in the English-speaking world around the First World War, when meat conservation was a matter of public campaign rather than personal preference, and the pea earned its place in them. This particular soup shows how thoroughly the canned pea had entered the larder by then: a dish that in an older cookbook would have begun with shelling, or with dried split peas soaked overnight, here starts with a can opener and finishes in a quarter of an hour. The pairing of peas with mint is long-standing in English cooking, where mint is traditionally added to the pot when green peas are boiled, and it carries over here almost as a reflex.