Chinese Peas
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the peas in water for about 24 hours.
Strain the peas and grind them into a thin paste, adding some of the soaking water.
Make the curd
Filter the mixture and concentrate the filtrate by heating.
Skim the surface once or twice, then cool the mixture.
Add plaster to coagulate the casein and mix in chloride of magnesium.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Dried peas
- Provide the protein, mainly casein, that coagulates to form the paste's set texture.
- Plaster
- Acts as a coagulant that causes the casein to clump and set into a soft curd.
- Chloride of magnesium
- Assists coagulation of the soy protein, helping the curd firm up.
The step that matters
Adding the plaster. Plaster must be added to a mixture that has been cooled, so the casein coagulates into a curd rather than clumping unevenly or failing to set. Adding it at the wrong temperature or in the wrong amount can leave the texture grainy or loose.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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