Green Pea Soup
Into about one quart of stock throw one quart of green peas, and one celery stalk, one onion and one turnip cut into pieces, and some mint. Stew until the mass is tender and strain through a sieve or coarse cheesecloth. Thin with stock if necessary and season with salt, pepper and a little sugar. Have at hand a pint of young green peas that have been parboiled in water in which there was a little mint and add them to the soup. Stew or simmer the whole until the peas are cooked, then serve.
A straightforward two-stage pea soup: a purée base of older peas and aromatics, finished with whole young peas. The only real pitfall is overcooking the garnish peas into grey mush.
- QuantitiesA quart of shelled green peas is roughly 1 1/4 lb, which means about 2 1/2 to 3 lb of peas in the pod. Frozen peas work for the purée base; use them straight from the bag, no thawing.
- StockThe recipe simply calls for 'stock'; a light chicken or veal stock suits it. Vegetable stock or even the pea pod cooking water gives a cleaner, greener result if you want the soup meatless.
- StrainingA blender or food processor before the sieve saves considerable effort. Push the purée through a fine sieve afterward to catch skins, which is what the coarse cheesecloth was doing.
- The finishing peasParboil these separately for 2 to 3 minutes only, and add them at the very end. Young or frozen peas need barely a minute in the hot soup or they lose colour and turn floury.
- MintAdd mint in two places, as the recipe implies: a sprig in the stewing pot and a little in the parboiling water. Fresh mint stirred in off the heat at the end keeps the aroma, since long cooking flattens it.
- The sugarThe 'little sugar' compensated for peas picked and shelled hours or days earlier, which convert their sugar to starch quickly. Taste first; modern frozen peas are usually blanched soon after picking and often need none.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts, serving six as a first course. Serve hot, though this soup is also good chilled, thinned with a little extra stock.
Green pea soup with mint belongs to the English kitchen garden tradition, where peas, mint and a piece of turnip were a summer fixture; the pairing of peas and mint is generally traced to English cookery of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when fresh green peas were a brief and prized seasonal luxury rather than a year-round staple. The two-stage method here — peas stewed and sieved for body, tender young peas added whole at the end — may reflect picking from a garden row where the pods do not all ripen at once. The Butterick Publishing Company was better known for dress patterns and The Delineator.