Cream of Pea
1 cup cooked or canned peas 1 cup water 1 tablespoon chopped onion 1 tablespoon butter 1 sprig mint 1/2 bay leaf 1 pint cream stock 1 teaspoon sugar Brown the onion in the butter; add it to the peas, mint, bay leaf, sugar and water and let all simmer slowly for one half hour. Strain through a fine sieve; add the cream sauce and serve.
A straightforward cream soup that leans on a companion recipe from elsewhere in the book, and whose printed text trails off into what looks like the start of a variation. A few points clear up both problems.
- "Cream stock" and "cream sauce" are the same thing"Cream stock" and "cream sauce" appear to be the same thing -- The ingredient list calls for 1 pint cream stock and the method says to add the cream sauce; both evidently point to the book's standing cream-soup foundation, a thin milk-based white sauce given elsewhere in the volume. Consult that recipe for the proportions, and make it separately while the peas simmer.
- Do not boil after the sauce goes inOnce the strained pea puree meets the milk-based sauce, hold it below a simmer; a hard boil on a floury milk base scorches on the bottom.
- UnitsA pint is 2 cups, so the pint of cream stock is the bulk of the soup. With the cup of water (some of which cooks away in the half hour) the finished quantity is roughly 3 cups.
- Canned peas need no helpCanned peas are already fully cooked and sit in salted liquid. The half-hour simmer is there to draw out the onion, mint and bay, not to cook the peas; drain the can and taste before salting the finished soup.
- StrainingA fine sieve was a standard way to get a smooth soup and it works, though it costs you volume. A blender or stick blender followed by a single pass through a medium sieve gives a fuller-bodied result. Remove the bay leaf and the mint stem first.
- The mint and bay are the pointThe mint and bay -- A sprig of mint and half a bay leaf are assertive against this quantity, and the teaspoon of sugar reads as a nudge toward the sweetness of fresh peas. The method strains them out at the end of the half hour, so they do not steep further.
- The trailing line"2 quarts pea pods, 1 quart water" is not part of the method above; it appears to be the opening ingredient line of a separate pea-pod preparation whose text has not survived on this page. With no cooking time or further instruction, treat it as a fragment rather than a usable direction.
Cream soups organised around a single stock foundation were characteristic of American domestic-science cookery in the 1910s and 1920s, and this recipe shows the system at work: master one thin white sauce, then swap in peas, celery, corn or tomato to produce a whole chapter of soups. The pea-pod line at the end belongs to an older and thriftier habit, visible elsewhere in kitchen writing of the period, of simmering the shelled pods for a sweet green liquid rather than throwing them out. Mint with peas is a long-standing pairing in English cookery.