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Fresh Peas with Butter
Place a pint of fresh, tender, young, shelled peas in a saucepan with a white onion having two cloves stuck in it, one small head well-washed green lettuce, three pints water, a teaspoon salt, a teaspoon sugar, half teaspoon white pepper and half ounce good butter. Cover the pan and gently boil for one hour, drain on a sieve, remove the lettuce and onion, and replace the peas in pan. Knead on a saucer half ounce butter with a teaspoon flour; add to the peas with two saltspoons sugar and two saltspoons white pepper. Mix well on the fire with a wooden spoon for two minutes, dress on a vegetable dish and serve.
A French-style braise of peas with lettuce and an onion stuck with cloves, written when peas were often older and starchier than what we buy today. Nearly everything transfers directly; the cooking time does not.
- The hour of boilingModern shelled or frozen peas are picked young and sweet and collapse to grey mush well before an hour. Five to eight minutes at a bare simmer is enough for fresh peas, two to three for frozen; the lettuce and onion still give their flavour in that time if the pan is covered.
- A pint of peasA pint by volume of shelled peas is roughly 12 oz, which is what you get from about 2 lb of peas in the pod. Frozen petits pois substitute one for one.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of white pepper at the finish is a half teaspoon on top of the half teaspoon already in the water, which is assertive by current taste; add it in stages.
- Half ounce butterOne tablespoon. The recipe uses two of them, one in the cooking liquid and one kneaded with flour at the end.
- Kneaded butter and flourThis is beurre manie. Work the tablespoon of butter and teaspoon of flour to a smooth paste with the back of a spoon, then stir it into the hot drained peas off the direct heat so it melts without lumping, and give it the full two minutes on the fire to cook out the raw flour.
- Three pints of waterFar more liquid than the peas need, and it is all drained away, taking sweetness with it. Cooking in just enough water to cover, or in the classic French manner with almost no water at all, keeps more flavour in the pan.
- The onion and lettuceThe clove-studded onion is an onion cloute, a standard French aromatic. Use a firm butterhead or Little Gem for the lettuce; loose-leaf types disintegrate. Both are discarded, so there is no need to trim them handsomely.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; a pint of shelled peas will serve about four as a side dish.
Peas stewed with lettuce, a clove-stuck onion and butter is the standard French petits pois a la francaise, a preparation that appears in French cookery writing from the eighteenth century onward. The lettuce is not really an ingredient to be eaten here; it supplies moisture and a faint sweetness and is lifted out before serving. The dish is finished with beurre manie rather than cream.