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Peas with Mint
Open a pint can of green peas; suppress the water, plunge them in slightly salted boiling water and boil for two minutes. Drain, then place in a saucepan with a teaspoon butter, half teaspoon salt, one saltspoon white pepper, half teaspoon sugar and half teaspoon very fresh, finely chopped mint. Toss all well on the fire for one minute and serve in a hot vegetable dish.
A minimal treatment that depends entirely on the peas not being overcooked twice. Canned peas are already fully cooked, so the boiling water is a reheating step, not a cooking one.
- "Suppress the water"An odd turn of phrase that most likely follows the French supprimer (to remove, do away with): simply pour off and discard the canning liquid. Rinsing the peas briefly under cold water also removes some of the tinny brine flavour.
- A pint canAbout 15-16 oz by weight, or roughly a cup and a half of drained peas. A standard modern can of peas is close enough. A 10 oz bag of frozen peas gives a comparable quantity and better colour and texture.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. The saltspoon was a small individual spoon from the table service, pressed into duty as a kitchen measure.
- Two minutes, no moreWith canned peas even two minutes is generous — they are heated through in under a minute and will collapse to mush if left. Frozen peas can take the full two minutes from frozen.
- The mintThe insistence on "very fresh" mint is the point of the dish. Chop it at the last moment and add it off the heat if you can; mint's volatile oils fade quickly and dried mint gives a dusty, tea-like flavour that does not work here.
- Butter and sugarA teaspoon of butter for a pint of peas is restrained by modern taste; a tablespoon is more usual now. The half teaspoon of sugar presumably counters the flatness of canned peas, and can be dropped entirely with frozen peas or fresh ones in season.
- YieldServes three to four as a side dish.
Mint with peas is a long-standing English pairing -- mint sauce with lamb, and minted peas alongside it, were common on the nineteenth-century English table. What dates this version is the can: the recipe treats canned vegetables as a legitimate starting point rather than a compromise, freshening them with a short blanch in salted water and a pinch of sugar. The French phrasing -- "suppress the water," "toss all well on the fire" -- reflects the book's grounding in professional continental kitchen language, even when the dish itself is thoroughly English.