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Petit Pois, Francaise
Have one pint, tender, shelled green peas. Place them in a saucepan with two gills cold water, one teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, one teaspoon soft sugar and six of the smallest peeled white onions obtainable, also a very small head green, well-washed lettuce, with four branches parsley tied around. Cover the pan, place on a brisk fire and let boil for twenty-five minutes. Remove the lettuce and parsley, add a tablespoon good butter, mix well and slowly cook for three minutes. Pour into a hot, deep dish and serve.
A straightforward braise of peas with lettuce and onions in the French manner. The one thing to change is the timing: twenty-five minutes was written for older, starchier peas than anything sold today.
- Two gills of waterA gill is half a cup, so this is one cup of water. Twenty-five minutes covered will reduce it somewhat; the recipe says only to pour the contents into a hot, deep dish, so a little liquid with the peas appears to be expected.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon. That is assertive against a pint of peas; a quarter teaspoon suits most palates.
- Soft sugarMoist, fine-grained sugar of the period. Ordinary granulated or superfine sugar does the same job.
- The timingFresh shelled peas today are sweet and young and are done in five to eight minutes; frozen peas need two or three. Twenty-five minutes at a boil turns them grey and mealy. Give the onions a head start of ten to fifteen minutes in the seasoned water, then add the peas.
- The lettuce bundleA small head of butterhead or Boston lettuce, tied with the parsley, steams down over the peas and adds moisture and a faint sweetness. It is a flavouring, discarded before serving, not a vegetable in the dish.
- Brisk fireHigh heat with the lid on. Watch the liquid: if it reduces away before the peas are tender, add a splash of water rather than letting the pan scorch.
- Finishing with butterThe final three minutes are for swirling the butter into the reduced cooking liquid to make a light emulsion. Keep it at a bare simmer; a hard boil will split it into a greasy pool.
- YieldA pint of shelled peas is roughly 10 to 12 ounces and serves three or four as a side dish.
Petits pois à la française is one of the fixed points of French vegetable cookery: young peas smothered with butter, small onions and a head of lettuce, with the lettuce giving up its water so that little else is needed. The craze for fresh green peas at the French court in the late seventeenth century is well documented in the correspondence of the period, where the appetite for them among the ladies of Versailles was described as something close to an obsession, and the dish has carried a courtly reputation ever since. The insistence on the smallest onions obtainable and a very small head of lettuce is the real French signature here, scale being as much a part of the style as the butter.