Duck Smothered with Green Peas

This is a variant entry: it borrows its quantities, vessel and buried-fire timing from Duck Smothered with Turnips elsewhere in the same section, and changes only three things. Read the parent recipe first, then apply the substitutions below.

• What actually changesThree edits only: mint in place of poultry seasoning, no cloves, green peas in place of turnips. Everything else follows the turnip version, so read that recipe first.
• The bean holeWhere a bean hole is used, it is a pit lined with stones and burned down to coals, into which a covered pot is lowered and buried under embers and earth for several hours. The heat is low and enclosed, which is why a duck cooked this way comes out braised rather than roasted. No temperature is recorded.
• If you have no pitA heavy Dutch oven with a tight lid in a low oven is the nearest modern approximation to slow, enclosed, moist heat. Cook until the leg joint moves freely; the original gives no time or temperature.
• Add the peas at the endThe text substitutes peas for turnips without changing anything else, but turnips can sit in the pot for hours and young green peas cannot. Add them only for the last few minutes; buried with the bird from the start they go grey and mealy.
• Fresh or dried mintDried herbs are conventionally reckoned about three times the strength of fresh by volume, so substitute roughly a tablespoon of chopped fresh mint for each teaspoon of dried. Match whatever quantity of poultry seasoning the turnip recipe specifies.
• Duck fatA duck renders a great deal of fat in a closed pot. Skim the surface before the peas go in, or the finished sauce will be greasy and the mint lost in it.
• Wild versus domesticA shot bird is leaner, tougher and stronger in flavour than a modern market duck. A 5 lb Pekin will cook faster and render considerably more fat.
• YieldNot stated. A duck of 4 to 5 lb would serve about three, perhaps four with plenty of peas and bread.