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Peas with Lettuce
Shell a quart young, tender green peas; plunge them into a quart boiling water with a teaspoon salt and boil for twenty minutes. Drain on a sieve. Finely chop a medium white onion and lightly brown in a small saucepan with one ounce butter. Then add the white part of a small head of sound lettuce very finely chopped up. Mix well with a fork and cook for two minutes, then add the peas. Season with a level teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar and two saltspoons white pepper, also sprinkling two teaspoons flour over; toss well, then add half gill cold water. Allow to gently simmer for ten minutes, occasionally tossing meanwhile. Pour into a deep, hot vegetable dish and serve. If green peas are not obtainable, a pint of canned peas can be employed in place of the fresh and cooked the same way.
A French-style braise of peas with lettuce, written for a cook who expected to boil vegetables into submission. The measurements are period, and the first timing is the one to ignore.
- Cut the first boil hardTwenty minutes in salted water will leave young peas grey and mealy, and they still get another ten minutes of simmering later. Give shelled fresh peas three to five minutes, just to set the colour, then drain.
- A quart of peasThe wording ("Shell a quart") may mean a quart of pods rather than a quart of shelled peas, and the offer of a pint of canned peas as a substitute points the same way, though the recipe is not explicit. Depending on which reading you take, expect somewhere between one and two cups of shelled peas.
- Gill and saltspoonIn American measure a gill is 4 fl oz (half a cup), so half a gill is 4 tablespoons; the imperial gill is 5 fl oz, which would make it a little more. A saltspoon is usually reckoned at a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is about half a teaspoon of white pepper.
- The white part of the lettuceThis means the pale, crisp heart and rib sections of a firm head, not the loose green outer leaves, which collapse into slime. Iceberg or the core of romaine both work; shred it very fine so it melts into the butter.
- Butter and onionOne ounce is 2 tablespoons. "Lightly brown" is misleading -- take the onion only to soft and pale gold, since scorched onion dominates a dish this delicate.
- The flour is a glaze, not a sauceTwo teaspoons sprinkled over and tossed, plus a quarter cup of water, gives just enough body to coat the peas. Toss thoroughly before the water goes in or you will find pale lumps of raw flour.
- Canned peasThey are already fully cooked. Drain them, skip the boiling stage entirely, and add them to the onion and lettuce for the final simmer only, or shorten that simmer to about five minutes.
- YieldEnough for about four as a side dish. It does not hold well, which is presumably why the original calls for a deep, hot dish and immediate service.
Cooking peas with lettuce and butter is a domesticated version of the French petits pois à la française -- peas cooked with shredded lettuce, a little onion and butter, and very little water. The technique appears in French kitchen writing of the nineteenth century and passed into English and American books; the lettuce gives sweetness and moisture, the flour a faint gloss. The fallback to canned peas suggests the dish was being offered to home cooks who might be cooking out of season.