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Puree of Green Peas
Put some green peas in a saucepan with a very small quantity of water and boil them until tender, then pass the whole through a fine hair-sieve. Put the puree in a saucepan with a little broth and stir it over the fire until boiling. Move the saucepan to the side of the fire, put in one-half teaspoonful of sugar, a moderate-sized lump of butter, and salt to taste. Cut some slices of bread, shape them into small croutons and fry them in butter. When lightly browned drain the croutons, put them in a deep dish, and pour the puree over them. Serve it with a separate dish of boiled rice.
A plain vegetable purée in the French manner, thickened only by the peas themselves. The whole thing hinges on the peas being young and cooked briefly in almost no water, so nothing of their sweetness leaches away.
- QuantityOscar gives no measure. Roughly 2 lb of shelled peas (about 4-5 lb in the pod, or two 1-lb bags of frozen) makes four generous servings once thinned with broth.
- Frozen peas workCommercially frozen peas are blanched and frozen soon after picking, and can be sweeter than market peas that have sat a while. They need only three or four minutes in a splash of water.
- The hair sieveA tamis of woven horsehair, pushed through with a wooden mushroom. A food mill on the fine plate, or a blender followed by a pass through a fine mesh strainer, gives the same result and removes the skins, which is the point of the exercise.
- "A little broth"Add it a ladle at a time until the puree coats a spoon but still pours. Oscar does not say which broth; chicken or a light veal stock suits it, and vegetable stock will do. Start with about a cup for 2 lb of peas.
- Side of the fireThis means off direct heat, at a bare simmer. The butter is stirred in there so it emulsifies rather than splits, and the purée keeps its gloss.
- A moderate-sized lump of butterTwo to three tablespoons for the quantity above. It is finishing butter, not cooking fat, so add it last and do not let the purée boil again.
- SugarThe half teaspoonful may have been to compensate for peas that had sat around, since peas convert sugar to starch after picking. With good frozen or very fresh peas, taste first; you may not want it.
- CroutonsCut from a firm white loaf, crusts off, in half-inch dice. Clarified butter fries them more cleanly than whole butter. The recipe has them put in a deep dish with the puree poured over, so serve at once or they go to sponge.
- ServingThe consistency here sits between a thick soup and a vegetable puree, and it is sent out with a separate dish of plain boiled rice.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf and then the Waldorf-Astoria from 1893, and his 1896 Cook Book is essentially the hotel's working repertoire set down at length — some nine hundred pages, much of it French kitchen practice translated for an American readership. A purée in that tradition is a vegetable cooked and sieved until it thickens itself, with no roux or cream to stand in the way, and the pea version was one of the standard green purées of the classical repertoire alongside sorrel and lettuce. The hair sieve and the instruction to move the pan to the side of the fire both belong to the coal range, where heat was a matter of geography rather than a dial. Serving rice alongside rather than in the dish probably reflects the older habit of offering a starch as an accompaniment to be added by the diner, and the fried croutons beneath the purée are a device that survives today mostly in soups.