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Cold Beef or Mutton Stewed with Peas
547. The directions are as follows:- Shell three quarters of a peck of green peas, not very young, and put them in a stewpan with the heart of a lettuce cut in pieces and an onion sliced. Simmer in half a pint of broth for an hour and a half; cut the beef in slices, sprinkle each side with pepper and salt, and put them in the stewpan. Simmer another hour and a half, then stir in a little Worcestershire sauce, and add flour and butter, with a little flour of mustard, to thicken it. Give one boil up and serve. This would be even better with uncooked meat, in which case it must be put on with the vegetables. A turnip previously boiled in the broth would improve the flavour.
A leftovers dish built on the French method of stewing peas with lettuce and onion, then extended into a full braise with slices of cold roast. The peas are meant to collapse into the sauce, so mature podded peas are essential.
- Three quarters of a peck of peasA dry peck is 8 quarts, so this is about 6 quarts of peas in the pod, perhaps 6 lb or so of pods yielding somewhere around 2 lb shelled. That is a large quantity by modern standards.
- "Not very young"The instruction is deliberate. Older, starchy peas hold up to three hours of simmering and thicken the liquid; sugar-snap-sweet young peas or frozen petits pois turn to grey water in a fraction of the time and should not be substituted here.
- Half a pint of brothOnly about 10 fl oz of liquid for that weight of peas works in a tightly covered pan over the lowest heat, with the peas releasing their own moisture. Check every twenty minutes and add broth by the spoonful; the finished dish is a thick stew, not a soup.
- Flour of mustardDry mustard powder, not made mustard. The recipe asks only for "a little".
- Flour and butter to thickenProbably kneaded butter and flour (beurre mani\in in off the boil and then brought up briefly, as the recipe says, to cook out the raw flour.
- The cold meatSlices of already-roasted beef or mutton need only to heat through and take up flavour. The full hour and a half specified will shred them; forty minutes is closer to the mark unless the meat came from a tough cut.
- The raw-meat versionThe author's own preference. Use about 1.5 lb of chuck, shin or mutton shoulder cut in pieces, in with the vegetables from the start, and expect two and a half to three hours before it is tender.
- The turnipThe recipe has the turnip boiled in the broth beforehand, apparently for flavour; it does not say whether the turnip itself is then used or set aside.
- YieldOn this quantity, probably six to eight generous servings. It reheats well and thickens further overnight.
This belongs to a mid-Victorian genre that took cold-meat cookery seriously: a large joint was roasted for one meal and the remains had to reappear two or three times without looking like remains. Stewing them with peas borrows from the French petits pois à la française, where peas are cooked slowly with a shredded lettuce heart, spring onions and butter rather than boiled fast in water; the lettuce, which dissolves entirely, is there for body and sweetness and often puzzles modern cooks who expect it to stay salad. What marks the recipe as English rather than French is the finish, with Worcestershire sauce and mustard powder pulling it firmly towards the flavour of a gravy.