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Green Peas
Shell, cover with boiling water and cook thirty minutes in an uncovered vessel. Drain, season and serve hot. A little sugar is sometimes an improvement. White sauce can be used with peas.
A bare-bones period method for fresh shelled peas. One instruction needs overturning outright, and the rest is a matter of proportions the original leaves out.
- The thirty minutesFreshly shelled peas are done in 3 to 5 minutes in boiling water, or a little longer for large, starchy end-of-season peas. Half an hour turns them grey-green and mealy, which was the accepted texture in 1920 and is not now.
- Why the vessel is uncoveredLeaving the pot open is usually explained as letting volatile acids escape rather than condensing back into the water, which helps keep the green brighter. The effect matters most over a long boil; over three or four minutes it makes little difference either way.
- How many podsReckon on 1 lb of pods yielding about 1 cup shelled peas. Three pounds of pods serves four as a side dish.
- Salt and sugarSalt the water rather than only seasoning after draining. The pinch of sugar the recipe offers is worth taking with older or shop-bought peas, whose sugars have already begun turning to starch; young garden peas need none.
- Frozen peasCommercially frozen peas are blanched at picking and are often sweeter than fresh ones held a few days. They want two to three minutes from frozen, not thirty.
- White sauceA plain butter-and-flour white sauce is what is meant. About 1 cup of thin sauce dresses four servings; drain the peas well first or the sauce slackens.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for a Philadelphia readership just after the First World War. Long boiling of green vegetables was common advice in American and British cookery books of the period, when soft, thoroughly cooked vegetables were widely held to be more digestible; brief cooking to preserve texture and colour became mainstream advice later. The suggestion of a little sugar is a practical response to the fact that a shelled pea loses sweetness quickly after picking.