A Cheap Green Peas Soup

History

This is Eliza Acton's receipt "A Cheap Green Peas Soup" as printed in her Modern Cookery for Private Families, first published by Longmans in 1845. Acton's method makes the soup economical by extracting flavour from the pea pods themselves rather than from a quantity of fresh peas: three quarts of pea shells are washed and boiled in an equal quantity of salted water for twenty to thirty minutes, then pressed through a strainer; two quarts of the resulting liquor are simmered with full-grown peas, cucumbers, lettuces, a thinly sliced onion (softened in butter), parsley and optional mint, seasoned with salt and white pepper or cayenne, worked through a hair-sieve, and sent to table with small fried sippets. Acton positions the dish explicitly as a cheaper alternative to the richer green-peas soups that precede it in the book, remarking that "The colour will not be so bright as that of the more expensive soups which precede it, but it will be excellent in flavour". The book was a best-seller that ran through 13 editions by 1853 and predated Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management of 1861. Beyond what the book itself records, the historical record does not document who ate this particular soup, where it originated, or that it signalled any social status or class; such claims cannot be sourced and are omitted.

Ingredients

• 3 quarts pea shells
• 3 quarts water
• 2 quarts liquor from pea shells
• 1 quart full-grown green peas
• 2 or 3 large cucumbers
• 3 moderate-sized lettuces
• 1 large onion
• 1 or 2 branch parsley
• 12 leaves mint
• 1 small teaspoonful salt
• fine white pepper or cayenne
• a morsel butter

Instructions

1. Wash the pea shells very clean.
2. Throw them into an equal quantity of boiling salted water.
3. Simmer for twenty to thirty minutes, until quite tender.
4. Turn the whole into a large strainer and press the pods strongly with a wooden spoon to extract the liquor.
5. Measure the strained liquor and put two quarts of it into a clean deep saucepan.
6. Bring to a boil.
7. Prepare the cucumbers by paring, quartering, and removing the seeds.
8. Cut the lettuces small, removing coarser leaves.
9. Slice the onion extremely thin and stew it for half an hour in a morsel of butter, or gently fry it without allowing it to brown.
10. Add the fried onion to the boiling liquor along with the quart of full-grown peas, the prepared cucumbers, the lettuces, parsley, and mint leaves if desired.
11. Stew all the vegetables gently together for an hour, seasoning with a small teaspoonful of salt (or more as needed) and white pepper or cayenne.
12. Work the whole of the vegetables with the soup through a hair-sieve.
13. Heat the soup afresh and send it to table with a dish of small fried sippets.