Cumgranissalis on 26 May 2005  •  Link

pea, pease was a cash crop in 17C after wheat, barley, oats: there be white and grey pease: as supplied to the Army:
Field pea (Pisum sativum L.), (Garden and canning peas are classified as P. sativum; however, the field pea is classified botanically as P. arvense.), a native of Southwest Asia, was among the first crops cultivated by man. Wild field pea can still be found in Afghanistan, Iran, and Ethiopia. It is a cool season crop and is widely grown in the cooler temperate zones of the world. World wide dry pea is grown on about 22 million acres annually and total production exceeds 11 million (U.S) tons.
unfortunately the lads and lasses of The first American Thanksgiving feast that was celebrated in Plymouth , pease failed.
interesting list of foods of 1621
Foods Available to the Pilgrims for their 1621 Thanksgiving
http://www.autopenhosting.org/may…

[Updated above link from http://members.aol.com/calebj/tha… , 7 Feb 2009, P.G.]

Cumgranissalis on 26 May 2005  •  Link

P.S. Without the lowly pea, we might never have found DNA?
It is a member of the Legume family:
Pea, common name for any of a subfamily of herbaceous annual plants, trees, and shrubs of the legume family, and especially for herbaceous plants of...
http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclo…

Cumgranissalis on 27 May 2005  •  Link

The greene [unripen 1620] pea , pease [and many other spellings that sounded similar]was the young [still is] un-rippened peas that appear to come into fashion in the 1600s, before then, they waited until the pea was havested along with the barley, rippened then it could be stored in a dried state. Then besoaked when required like a pouridge along with [Penn state quaker oats] [See Evelyn's Sylva 1664 on the gardening of peas for domestic consumtion]. The spelling changed too[no doubt some young man with a stop watch said money could be saved by using 2 less letters],
also the word pease was confused with pax tecum [pease to you] [now peace],
then The Bard used 'peased cod' in one of his plays [ peas pod]
all cribbed from OED.

Ian McLean on 14 Sep 2005  •  Link

The peas that are mentioned mostly from this period were in fact chick peas.

Both the army and the navy supplied chick peas instead of green peas.

dirk on 23 Feb 2006  •  Link

A recipe for "Pease Pottage"

http://www.plimoth.org/learn/hist…

Cactus Wren on 23 May 2007  •  Link

Dirk's recipe has been moved to:

http://plimoth.org/discover/recip…

Terry Foreman on 25 Jul 2016  •  Link

The Pea Pepys would have eaten
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea