No. 2743

Green Peas, French Style

Petits Pois a la Francaise

Put one pint of fresh-shelled green peas into a saucepan with a little cold water, stirring in a piece of butter; add salt and a bunch of parsley; cook with the lid on. When sufficiently done and the liquid reduced add a small piece of kneaded butter (No. 579); then take from the fire and finish by incorporating a large piece of butter divided in small bits. The peas should be well buttered and thickened so that the liquid be entirely absorbed.

With Sugar.—Prepare them exactly the same, only adding a pinch of powdered sugar.

← No. 2742 Green Peas, English Style, and Puree of Gree Beans, Peas & Lentils No. 2744 Green Peas, Housekeeper's Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives no quantities beyond the peas, which is normal for The Epicurean — the cook was expected to judge by eye. A few numbers make it workable.

The hinge: barely any waterUse just enough cold water to come partway up the peas, roughly 1/4 cup for a pint. The finished dish should have no free liquid at all — everything reduces down to a buttery glaze, so starting with too much water means either watery peas or peas boiled to mush while you wait for it to go.
QuantitiesA pint of shelled peas is about 10 oz, or 2 to 3 lb of peas in the pod. Figure 2 tablespoons of butter at the start, a teaspoon of kneaded butter, and another 2 to 3 tablespoons worked in off the heat. Serves three or four as a side.
Kneaded butter (No. 579)Beurre manié: soft butter mashed with flour to a paste (usually roughly equal parts, though proportions vary), whisked into hot liquid to thicken it without lumps. A teaspoon of paste is plenty here — it is meant to bind a few spoonfuls of liquid, not make a sauce.
The final butterOff the heat, add the cold butter in small bits and swirl. Heat will break the emulsion and leave you with greasy peas in a pool of melted fat, so keep the pan off the burner and work quickly.
TimingFresh young peas need 8 to 12 minutes covered; older, starchier ones longer. Frozen peas want 3 to 4 minutes and no more, since they are already blanched — start them in the butter and a splash of water and go straight to the finish.
The parsleyA bunch means stems tied with string, added whole and lifted out before serving. The stems are often held to carry as much flavor as the leaves, and they leave nothing behind to pick out.
With sugarA pinch of sugar is a common French treatment for peas past their first youth, compensating for sweetness lost after picking. Commercially frozen peas are frozen soon after harvest and rarely need it.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full working record of that kitchen — some 3,500 numbered recipes, cross-referenced in the manner of Escoffier's later Guide Culinaire. Petits pois à la française is often said to be the classic treatment of the vegetable in French cookery, though versions vary and the standard one usually includes lettuce and small onions, which this version omits. It is distinguished by the fact that the peas are not really boiled: they cook in butter and their own moisture, and the small amount of liquid is thickened and enriched rather than drained away. Ranhofer places it immediately after the English style, and the contrast is the point — the French method keeps everything in the pan. The pinch of sugar reflects a period reality that has largely disappeared: garden peas convert their sugars to starch within a day or two of picking, and a nineteenth-century cook working with market peas was often compensating for a vegetable well past its best.