No. 261

Cream of Peas with Mint

Creme de pois a la Menthe

Parboil two pounds of shelled green peas until partly cooked; then drain and put them on to fry with half a pound of fresh butter; moisten with white broth and add half a pound of minced white onions. When the peas are entirely cooked drain and pound them, diluting with veloute and the same broth they were cooked in; rub the whole through a tammy and return to the saucepan; put it on the fire and heat without boiling. Just when prepared to serve, thicken with egg-yolks, butter, and cream, adding a few mint leaves finely chopped and as garnishing some small chicken quenelles made with half chicken quenelle forcemeat, and half cream forcemeat laid through a pocket on a buttered baking tin.

← No. 260 Cream of Peas a la St. Germain Soups & Broths No. 262 Cream of Sorrel with Stuffed Eggs →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stock, velouté and forcemeat already on hand, so the recipe is really an assembly order. The hinge is the finish: once the egg yolks go in, the soup must never boil.

The liaisonEgg yolks, butter and cream added at the end will curdle at a simmer. Hold the soup around 170-180F, stir constantly, and serve immediately; it cannot be reheated hard or held on a burner.
White brothAn unbrowned veal or chicken stock, as opposed to a browned one. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily roasted, which will muddy the colour.
VeloutéA separate preparation in the book: white stock thickened with a blond roux. The recipe gives no quantity; the purée is diluted with velouté and the pea cooking broth to the consistency wanted.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine worsted sieve through which two cooks wrung the purée. A blender followed by a chinois or fine-mesh strainer does the same work in a fraction of the time.
"Fry" the peasHalf a pound of butter for two pounds of peas is a stew rather than a fry — keep the heat low so neither butter nor onion takes colour. The finished soup should be pale green.
Mint at the endChopped mint goes in at service, off the boil. Cooked mint turns dull and medicinal; the whole point of the garnish is the raw top note against the sweet peas.
QuenellesSmall dumplings of chicken forcemeat lightened with cream forcemeat, piped through a pastry bag onto a buttered tray as the recipe directs; the poaching liquid and method are not specified here. Keep them small, since large ones dominate a cream soup.
ColourPeas cooked to "entirely cooked" and then puréed will drift toward olive. Modern practice is to shorten the second cooking and purée while hot, or to add a handful of blanched peas at the end for colour.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Two pounds of shelled peas with stock, velouté and cream will make roughly eight to ten modest soup portions.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) recorded three decades of cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and its soup chapter is essentially a French repertoire transplanted whole. Purées of green pea run through that repertoire under the name Saint-Germain, generally traced to the district west of Paris long associated with early market peas; No. 260, the entry directly before this one, is the plain version, and this is its variation. The pairing of peas with mint is more often thought of as English than French, and its presence here — with the mint added raw at the last moment rather than boiled with the peas as in an English kitchen — shows Ranhofer taking a familiar flavour and fitting it to the classical method: purée, tammy, velouté, and a final liaison of yolks and cream. The chicken quenelles are pure period service, a garnish whose function is as much visual as gustatory in an era when a soup arrived at table in a tureen and was judged on its surface.