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| _ Ancient Use of Peas

REEN PEAS as we know them date back only four hundred
Gi years; that is, about 1550 they were introduced from Hol-
land into England. In fact, we are told that when Eliza-

-beth was released from her imprisonment in the Tower in May,

1554, she first performed her devotions in the Church of All-
hallows and then dined at a neighboring inn at which the prin-
cipal dish was boiled peas, a “fit dainties for ladies they come
so far and cost so dear.” Shakespeare in King Henry the Fourth,
Midsummer Night’s Dream and in Twelfth Night refers to peas
and peascod time.

Dried peas were known and used largely in early Greece and
Rome though green peas have been evolved in almost our time
from the field pea and the sweet variety of the garden.

The earliest translation of the famous Latin poem said to have
been written in 1100 A.D. by the physicians of Salerno for the
preservation of the health of Robert, eldest son of William the
Conqueror, gives in jingle:

Pease may be prays’d, and discommended too, ~—
According as their nature is to do.
The Huskes avoyded then the pulse is good,
Well nourishing not hurtful to the blood,
But in the Huskes they are gnawing meat,
And in the stomack cause inflations great.

Rice Peason 1100 A.D.

The Rice Peason must be layed in warm water, and therein to
be all rubbed with ones hand a good while then after, in the fore-
said water they should be tempered all the night: and therein
(the next night following) to be boyled twice or thrice, and then
dress, and so served. But when the hour of dinner draweth near,
you may dresse it with Cinamon and Saffron, and a little quan-
tity of wine put thereto, which done then boil at once, and so eat
it at the beginning of dinner or sapper, and the broth of pottage
of Rice, and of round white peason is very wholesom, and friendly
to mans nature, and so likewise to their substance.*

“Rice Peason” a la 1929
1 cup rice (cooked in water and liquor from can of peas)
1% teaspoon salt

% teaspoon cinnamon ‘
% teaspoon saffron (rubbed to powder)
1 cup peas

2 tablespoons vinegar
* Taken from Regimen Sanitatis Salerni or The Schools of Salernes.

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