Home › Soup Accessories › Green Pea Custard
Green Pea Custard
One-half cup of mashed green peas, one tablespoon of beef stock and the slightly beaten whites of three eggs. Season with salt, pepper and paprika. Beat thoroughly, place in shallow dish and bake as directed for Custard Royale. When cool, cut into cubes and place in soup without breaking. If a more decided green shade is desired, color with a little parsley or spinach coloring.
A savory royale — a firm baked custard cut into cubes to float in clear soup. The recipe leans on the preceding "Custard Royale" for its method, which is worth spelling out.
- The method it points toThe preceding "Custard Royale" carries the actual method; this page gives none of it. A royale of this kind is baked in a shallow pan set in a pan of hot water in a slow oven until just set — a period "slow oven" is usually read as somewhere near 300 to 325F, and a shallow layer about half an inch deep will take roughly 20 to 30 minutes, though the text specifies neither. Cooked hotter, the custard weeps and turns spongy, and the cubes will not hold their edges in hot broth.
- Whites onlyThree egg whites and no yolks are what give this its pale green and its clean cut. Do not substitute whole eggs; the yolk colors it dull yellow-green and softens the set.
- PeasFresh peas cooked until tender and pressed through a sieve give the smoothest result. Thawed frozen peas work and need only brief cooking; either way sieve or blend and press out the skins, or the cubes will crumble along the fibers.
- One tablespoon of stockThat is not a typo — the liquid is deliberately minimal so the custard sets firm enough to cube. Use a well-flavored but unsalted or lightly salted beef stock, since seasoning is added separately.
- Spinach coloringThe period trick is spinach or parsley "green" — leaves pounded, the juice squeezed out and heated gently so the green solids coagulate, then strained off and stirred in. A few drops of blanched-spinach purée does the same job. Modern green food coloring will read as artificial against a clear consommé.
- Cutting and servingChill the baked sheet thoroughly before cutting; a cold custard cuts cleanly with a thin knife, a warm one tears. Cut cubes of about a quarter inch, warm them in a ladle of hot soup, and add them to the plate last so they do not break up in stirring.
- YieldHalf a cup of pea purée and three whites makes only a thin sheet of custard, enough garnish for several servings of clear soup; the recipe gives no yield.
Royale — from the French royale, the classic garnish of firm baked custard cut into dice, diamonds or stars for consommé — was a standard of formal service by the time the Butterick book appeared in 1911. A clear soup was judged partly on the precision of what floated in it, and colored royales let a household stage that precision from ordinary materials: a few peas, a spoonful of stock, some egg whites. The recipe simply says "bake as directed for Custard Royale" and assumes the reader has the companion recipe to hand.