Pea soup

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Dutch pea soup
Dutch pea soup

Pea soup is soup made, typically, from dried peas. It is, with variations, a part of the cuisine of many cultures. It is greyish-green or yellow in color depending on the regional variety of peas used; all are cultivars of Pisum sativum.

Perhaps not surprisingly, pea soup was eaten in antiquity; it is mentioned in Aristophanes' The Birds, and according to one source "the Greeks and Romans were cultivating this legume about 500 to 400 BC. During that era, vendors in the streets of Athens were selling hot pea soup."[1]


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[edit] Pea soup around the world

[edit] Australia

In Adelaide, a traditional food is the Pie floater, a meat pie floating in a bowl of pea soup.

[edit] Canada

Soupe aux pois (yellow pea soup) is a national dish in French Canadian cooking. One source says "The most authentic version of Quebec's soupe aux pois use whole yellow peas, with salt pork and herbs for flavour. After cooking, the pork is usually chopped and returned to the soup, or sometimes removed to slice thinly and served separately... Newfoundland Pea Soup is very similar, but usually includes more vegetables such as diced turnips and carrots, and is often topped with small dumplings."

A novel about nineteenth-century Canadian farmers by Louis Hemon, entitled Maria Chapdelaine, depicts pea soup as common farmhouse fare:

Already the pea-soup smoked in the plates. The five men set themselves at table without haste, as if sensation were somewhat dulled by the heavy work...
"...Most of you farmers, know how it is too. All the morning you have worked hard, and go to your house for dinner and a little rest. Then, before you are well seated at table, a child is yelling:—'The cows are over the fence;' or 'The sheep are in the crop,' and everyone jumps up and runs... And when you have managed to drive the cows or the sheep into their paddock and put up the rails, you get back to the house nicely 'rested' to find the pea-soup cold and full of flies, the pork under the table gnawed by dogs and cats, and you eat what you can lay your hands on, watching for the next trick the wretched animals are getting ready to play on you."

[edit] Germany

Pea soup is a common dish throughout Germany. It often contains meat such as bacon, sausage or Kassler (pickled and smoked pork) depending on regional preferences. Very often, several Wieners will accompany a serving of pea soup as well as some dark bread. Ready-made soup in cans is sometimes used to prepare the dish.

One of the very first instant products was a pea soup product, which mainly consisted of pea meal and beef fat ("Erbswurst"). It was invented in 1867 by Johann Heinrich Grüneberg, who sold the recipe to the Prussian state. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, the war ministry, which had previously tested the possibility of feeding soldiers solely on instant pea soup and bread, built a large manufacturing plant and produced between 4,000 and 5,000 tons of Erbswurst for the army during the war. In 1889, the Knorr instant-food company bought the license. Knorr, which is today a Unilever brand, continues the production of Erbswurst to the present day.

[edit] Netherlands

Erwtensoep, also called "snert" is a form of green split-pea soup emblematic of Dutch cuisine. Traditionally eaten in winter, erwtensoep has a very thick consistency, often includes pork and sausage, and is almost a stew rather than a soup. One source says "You should be able to stand a spoon upright in a good pea soup."

It is customarily served with rye bread (roggebrood) and cheese or butter. The meat may be put on the rye bread and eaten with mustard.

It is not uncommon to be sold in small cups at the so called 'Koek en zopie' outlets on frozen canals as a hearty snack to skaters.

See also: Erwtensoep (Dutch Wikipedia)

[edit] Nordic countries

In the Nordic countries, there is a tradition of serving pea soup on Thursdays.

[edit] United Kingdom

A well-known nursery rhyme which first appeared in 1765 speaks of

Pease porridge hot,
Pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old.

"Pease" is the archaic form of the word "pea". Also see pease pudding.

[edit] United States

In the United States, pea soup is merely one of many familiar kinds of soup. "Pea soup" without qualification usually means a perfectly smooth puree. "Split Pea Soup" is a slightly thinner soup with visible peas, pieces of ham or other pork, and vegetables (most commonly carrots) and is usually made from dried, split green peas. Many cookbooks contain a recipe or two, but pea soup has no particular cultural resonance in the U.S., except that it may be eaten with corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day, owing to its green color.[citation needed]

In the U.S., the culturally-analogous dried legume would probably be the bean (white, navy, or Great Northern). Bean soup made from white beans has been a traditionally-featured menu item of the restaurants of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate for over a century and is referred to as Senate Bean soup. Bean soup is on the menu in the Senate's restaurant every day. There are several stories about the origin of that mandate, but none has been corroborated.

According to one story, the Senate’s bean soup tradition began early in the 20th-century at the request of Senator Fred Dubois of Idaho. Another story attributes the request to Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota, who expressed his fondness for the soup in 1903.[citation needed]

[edit] Pea soup in literature and popular culture

The 1881 Household Cyclopedia noted that "Children are mostly fond of pea soup, and it seldom disagrees with them."

In the 1973 film The Exorcist, Linda Blair's 12-year-old character memorably vomits pea soup as a result of demonic possession.

In the popular children's book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which depicts what the world would be like if we had food in place of weather elements, the air is literally made of a Pea Soup Fog. (You could even eat it!)

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Outcast, Commander Riker comments that his father's homemade split pea soup used to keep him warm on cold Alaska nights.

Old Vermonters said, "Pea soup and johnny cake/Make a Frenchman's belly ache."

[edit] Pea soup fog

Pea Soup, or Pea Souper is an idiom for fog. Although it is sometimes used for any thick fog, it refers particularly to a yellowish smog caused by the burning of soft coal. Such fogs were prevalent in UK cities (particularly London) prior to passage of the Clean Air Act of 1956. An 1871 New York Times article refers to "London, particularly, where the population are periodically submerged in a fog of the consistency of pea soup..."

Contrary to popular impression, the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories contain only a handful of references to London fogs, and the phrase "pea-soup" is not used. A Study in Scarlet (1887) mentions that "a dun-coloured veil hung over the house-tops."

In the phrase "pea-soup fog," the implied comparison may have been to yellow pea soup: "...the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted" (Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess, 1892); "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes," (T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1917; "London had been reeking in a green-yellow fog" (Winston Churchill, A Traveller in War-Time, 1918); "the brown fog of a winter dawn" (T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922); "a faint yellow fog" (Stella Benson, This is the End). Inez Haynes Irwin writing in 1921 in The Californiacs praises what was then the superior quality of California fog, saying it is "Not distilled from pea soup like the London fogs; moist air-gauzes rather, pearl-touched and glimmering."

[edit] References

  • Baring-Gould, William. S. and Ceil Baring-Gould (1962) The Annotated Mother Goose. (Bramhall House) [Pease porridge rhyme: dates from 1765, refers to a "thin pudding."]
  • New York Times, Apr 2, 1871, pg. 3: "London... fog the consistency of pea-soup..."
  1. ^ Zel and Reuben Allen. Peas: History, Uses, Folklore, Growing, Nutrition, Purchasing, Preparation, Recipe: Pease Porridge Hot, Pease Porridge Cold. Vegetarians in Paradise: A Los Angeles Vegetarian Web Magazine. Retrieved on [[February 20, 2007]].: "vendors in the streets of [classical] Athens were selling hot pea soup"

[edit] External links

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