No. 2742

Green Peas, English Style, and Puree of Green Peas

Petits Pois a l'Anglaise et Puree de Pois Verts

Boil some green peas in an untinned copper vessel containing boiling salted water and a few mint leaves; when cooked, drain and place them in a sautoir with salt, sugar and fresh butter, divided in small pats, mixing it into the peas without stirring them. Dress in a vegetable dish and lay small bits of butter on top.

Puree of Green Peas.—To obtain a puree pound the cooked and drained peas in a mortar, adding some very thick bechamel (No. 409); season with salt and sugar. press through a fine sieve, and return to the saucepan to boil; stir in some fine butter at the last moment.

← No. 2741 Green Peas—Mangetout—a la Fleurette Beans, Peas & Lentils No. 2743 Green Peas, French Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two preparations from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894): plainly boiled buttered peas in the English manner, and the same peas pounded into a purée with béchamel. The technique is simple; most of what needs translating is the equipment and one instruction you should disregard.

Ignore the untinned copperBoiling green vegetables in bare copper was a nineteenth-century trick for fixing a bright green colour, and it works because copper ions bind to the chlorophyll. It also leaves dissolved copper in the food, which is why the practice was abandoned. Use stainless steel or any lined pan; keep the lid off and the water at a hard boil to preserve colour instead.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than deep. A 10-inch skillet or sauté pan is the equivalent, and the width matters here because the peas should sit in a shallow layer while the butter melts.
Petits poisNot simply young peas but a small-seeded type, picked tiny. Frozen petits pois are closer to what Ranhofer had than most fresh supermarket peas, which are large and starchy. If using frozen, they need only a couple of minutes in the boiling water.
Cooking timeThe original gives none. Fresh shelled small peas take 3 to 6 minutes in boiling salted water, larger or older ones up to 10. Taste rather than time them; once they lose their bright colour the sweetness has gone too.
"Without stirring them"This is the hinge of the first dish. The butter goes in as small pats and the pan is rolled or swirled so the peas coat themselves; the original does not say whether the pan is on or off the heat, but gentle heat is enough to melt the pats. Stirring with a spoon breaks the skins and the result turns cloudy and mushy.
Salt and sugarThe sugar is not a flourish but standard practice with peas of the period, which lost sweetness fast after picking. With modern frozen peas start with a pinch and taste; they are often sweet enough already.
The béchamelThe bechamel -- Ranhofer's No. 409 is a thick white sauce; the recipe here calls for it very thick. For the puree use it stiff, roughly the consistency of soft mashed potato, or the sieved peas will slacken into soup. Begin with about a quarter cup of sauce per pound of shelled peas and add more only if needed.
Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding, but the sieving still matters: it removes the skins, which is the whole point of a purée of green peas. Push the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve or a food mill with the fine plate.
YieldA pound of shelled peas, about 3 pounds in the pod, serves four as a vegetable and rather less as a purée once sieved.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean out of some thirty years in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and the book is organised as a professional reference rather than a domestic cookbook, which is why each dish carries a number and cross-references others. The distinction he draws here is the standard one in French kitchen classification: à l'anglaise means boiled in salted water and finished with butter, while the French style that follows at No. 2743 stews the peas rather than boiling them. Mint with peas is the English signature, and its presence in a French-trained chef's à l'anglaise is a nod to that. The direction to use untinned copper reflects a belief, common in professional kitchens through the nineteenth century, that copper was necessary to keep green vegetables green; the same reasoning lay behind the copper-greened pickles that food-adulteration reformers campaigned against across the century.