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Green Pea Soup
Put four quarts of freshly shelled green peas into a stewpan with a little salt, a small onion, a few sprigs of mint and parsley tied together, and water to cover. Boil the peas until tender, then strain, remove the onion, mint and parsley, and rub the peas through a fine hair sieve into a basin. Have ready boiling as much clear stock as will make the required quantity of soup, from which all the fat has been removed, put in the peas, with about one ounce of butter and one or two teaspoonfuls of spinach green to give it a brighter color, and boil up again, then turn it into a soup tureen and serve with sippets of toast.
A classic hotel purée, written for a kitchen with a pea shellers' bench and a stockpot always on the range. Almost nothing needs changing except the scale and the colouring.
- Scale and yieldFour quarts of shelled peas is roughly 5 lb. The recipe leaves the amount of stock, and so the yield, to the cook; at the stock quantity suggested below it makes several quarts of soup. For six people, use 1 quart (about 1 1/4 lb) of shelled peas and scale the rest down.
- Frozen peas workFreshly shelled peas were the whole point in a hotel that bought by the bushel, but frozen peas are picked and blanched within hours and purée sweeter than most supermarket pods. Use the same weight and shorten the boiling to a few minutes.
- "Spinach green"A professional colouring made by pounding raw spinach, pressing out the juice, and heating it gently until the green coagulates into a paste that can be lifted off. You will not buy it; skip it, or blend a handful of raw spinach leaves into the finished soup off the heat.
- The hair sieveA fine-mesh sieve of woven horsehair, the standard fine sieve of the period. Puree in a blender or food mill first, then press through a fine sieve to catch the skins, which is what makes the soup smooth.
- Don't boil it up twiceThe instruction to boil again after adding the purée is what turns bright green soup olive-drab. Bring the stock to a boil first, add the purée and butter, and heat only until steaming, then serve at once.
- How much stockThe original leaves the quantity to the cook. About 3 quarts of clear, well-skimmed chicken or veal stock to the full batch of peas gives a soup that coats a spoon without being stiff; add more to thin.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast, served alongside or floated on top. Croutons fried in butter do the same job.
- SeasoningSalt goes into the pea water only, and no pepper is mentioned at all. Taste and correct after the puree goes in; a puree absorbs far more salt than the cook expects.
Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel whose name carried the Waldorf's kitchen into print in 1896, was setting down the standard French repertoire as it was practised in New York hotels. This is essentially potage Saint-Germain, the pea pur"e for the Paris suburb long associated with early market peas " though the name is also commonly attributed to the Comte de Saint-Germain " minus the ham or the shredded lettuce that often go with it. The mint and parsley bundle is the English hand in the dish; French versions lean on chervil. The most telling detail is the "spinach green", a colouring added to the soup.