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Green Peas
Shell the peas and cover them sparingly with water; bring to a boil; then push aside until the water will just bubble gently. When ; then push aside until the water will just bubble gently. When the peas are tender add salt and butter; cook ten minutes longer and serve.
If the peas are not the sweet variety, add a teaspoon of sugar.
A plain simmer rather than a hard boil, with the seasoning held back until the peas have softened. The method suits fresh shelled peas; frozen peas need a fraction of the time.
- The hinge"Cover sparingly" is the whole point: barely enough water to come level with the peas, so they steam more than boil and the sweetness stays in the pot rather than going down the drain. Do not drown them.
- "Push aside"On a coal or wood range this meant sliding the pan off the hot centre plate to a cooler ring. On a gas or electric hob, bring to a boil then drop the heat to low so the surface only trembles.
- Total cooking timeYoung shelled peas are tender in 4 to 8 minutes; the further ten minutes after the butter goes in will leave them soft and olive-drab. If you want them bright and sweet, add salt, butter and sugar as soon as they yield and cook a minute or two more.
- Salt held backLate salting was common advice in cookery writing of this period, often on the belief that salt toughened the skins. It makes little difference in practice, so season when it suits you.
- The sugarA teaspoon of sugar compensates for starchier, non-sugar varieties and for peas that have sat a day or two after picking, when their sugars have turned to starch. Garden-fresh or frozen peas do not need it.
- ButterNo quantity is given. About 1 tablespoon per pound of shelled peas is right; the small amount of cooking water and the butter emulsify into a light sauce.
- YieldReckon about 1 lb of peas in the pod for each serving, which shells out to roughly a cup. Three pounds unshelled serves three.
Shelling peas was a summer ritual in the era of this book, and cookery writers of the time were preoccupied with the fact that peas lose their sugar within hours of picking. Hence the teaspoon of sugar for peas that are "not the sweet variety" -- a stopgap often said to have survived into the twentieth century until commercial freezing, which halts the sugar-to-starch conversion almost at the vine, made it largely unnecessary. The instruction to cover them only sparingly with water is generally read as part of a long shift in American vegetable cookery away from the older habit of boiling greens in an open kettle of abundant water, a change traced to the growing conviction that flavour and food value were being poured off with the liquid.