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Fresh Peas, Vielle Mode
Cut two ounces lean salt pork into small squares and place in a saucepan with one finely chopped white onion, one teaspoon melted butter, and fry to a nice golden colour; add a pint fresh, shelled peas and moisten with a half pint white broth. Tie in a bunch six green lettuce leaves with two leeks, add to the pan, season with a half teaspoon each salt and sugar and two saltspoons pepper. Cover the pan and let boil for forty-five minutes, then remove the lettuce and leeks. Mix on a plate a tablespoon butter with a teaspoon flour, then add little by little to the peas, tossing well meanwhile, dress on a vegetable dish and serve.
A version of the French petits pois à la française, thickened at the end with kneaded butter and flour. Only the cooking time needs real rethinking.
- The forty-five minutesFresh garden peas of the period were often large, starchy and picked days before use, and cooks of the time wanted them soft. Modern peas, fresh or frozen, are tender in 8-12 minutes; at three-quarters of an hour they turn grey-khaki and mealy. Build the braise, then give the peas the time they actually need.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of pepper — assertive but not unreasonable against a pint of peas and salt pork.
- A pint of peasThis means a pint by volume already shelled, roughly 10 oz or 300 g, which takes about 2 lb of peas in the pod. Frozen petits pois substitute directly.
- White brothA light, uncoloured stock — veal or chicken made without browning the bones. Any unsalted light chicken stock works; taste before adding the half teaspoon of salt, since the pork is already salty.
- Salt porkCured but unsmoked fatback or belly. Blanch it a minute or two if it is very salty. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon or pancetta is the closest supermarket stand-in; smoked bacon will dominate the dish.
- The lettuce and leek bundleTied so it can be lifted out whole, it perfumes the liquid and is discarded. Use the outer leaves of a butterhead or romaine and the green tops of leeks — this is a use for trimmings, not for the hearts.
- The finishButter mashed with flour on a plate is beurre manié. Work it in off the boil in small pieces, swirling rather than stirring hard, so the peas are glazed rather than sauced; a hard boil after adding it will taste of raw flour.
- YieldServes four as a vegetable alongside a roast, or two or three as a light course with bread.
The dish is French home cooking dressed up for an American readership — peas stewed with lettuce, onion and a little pork, a treatment found in French cookery from the eighteenth century onward and usually catalogued as petits pois à la française. The title's "Vielle Mode" looks like a misspelling of vieille mode, old fashion. Its presence in a section called The World's Kitchen reflects how such collections were assembled: a French classic, lightly translated into cups and teaspoons, sitting beside dishes from a dozen other cuisines. The lettuce bundle is the telling detail — the moisture and faint sweetness of greens would have helped keep late-season peas from drying out over a long, slow braise.