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Peas, Boiled with Pods
Having shelled a suitable quantity of crisp peas, set them in a cool place, wash the pods, and cook them in as little water as possible. After the pods have boiled onehalf an hour, strain the water, boil the peas in it thirty minutes (or less if they are very small), and season with salt and pepper, and either butter or sweet cream, as preferred.
The point of this method is the pod broth: the sugary, grassy liquid cooked out of the hulls becomes the cooking water for the peas themselves. Everything else is straightforward, but the timing needs rethinking.
- Thirty minutes is far too long for the peasPeas cooked half an hour turn grey-green, mealy and flat. Young shelled peas need 3 to 5 minutes in the simmering pod liquor; older, starchier ones 8 to 10. Taste at three minutes and go from there.
- The pod stock is worth the full timeThe half hour applies to the hulls and is not excessive — they are tough and need it to give up their sugar. Use just enough water to cover, a pint or so to a quart of pods, and keep it at a bare simmer so it does not reduce away.
- Strain properlyPods are stringy and the fibres shed. Pour the liquor through a fine sieve or a doubled square of cheesecloth, pressing the pods to extract the last of it, and discard them.
- "Sweet cream"Unsweetened fresh cream, as opposed to the soured or ripened cream a period kitchen would also have on hand. Any modern heavy or single cream serves.
- "A suitable quantity"The book gives no amount. Reckon 3 lb of peas in the pod for four people, which yields roughly 1 lb shelled, with the hulls left over for the broth.
- Setting the shelled peas asideThe instruction to keep them in a cool place while the pods cook is sound — shelled peas convert sugar to starch quickly at room temperature. Refrigerate them, covered, and cook the same day.
- Season at the endSalt the pod liquor lightly and finish the seasoning after cooking; the broth concentrates as it simmers and can easily go over.
- With frozen peasThe technique does not transfer, since you have no pods. If pods are unavailable the dish is simply buttered peas.
Cooking peas in a broth drawn from their own hulls is often said to be a thrift measure of long standing in English and American kitchens, and it survives today in the pea-pod soups and stocks of restaurant cooking. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book in the early twentieth century for the same audience of middle-class housekeepers, and the frugality here is characteristic: nothing in a vegetable that has cost money is thrown away untasted. The recipe also belongs to a moment before the frozen pea, when peas came in the pod, were shelled by hand, and lost sweetness by the hour; hence the direction to keep the shelled peas cool while the hulls boil. The long cooking times reflect a period standard for vegetables generally, one that persisted in print well into the mid-century before shorter, brighter cooking took hold.