Eastern Hemisphere Origins

Pisum sativum

Most scholars believe that farming and livestock raising arose first in southwestern Asia.

Prehistorians have focused on grains, though this region also appears to have pioneered legume cultivation. Between about 7000 and 3000 BCE, farmers there domesticated peas, chickpeas, lentils, and broad beans.³⁰ All have fed humans, though among the four, this chapter treats just peas in the conviction that they are a world food whereas the others are regional items. Attention on southwestern Asia should not obscure the possibility that pea farming and consumption may have originated in India, Myanmar, or Thailand. Interesting is evidence of 11,000-year-old peas on the border between what are today Myanmar and Thailand.³¹ This find proves consumption even if peas were not domesticated then.

FIGURE 8.1 Peas. (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017735605/.)

From southwestern Asia, peas traveled south to Egypt’s Nile delta around 4500 BCE, moving south along the river through Upper Egypt during the next millennium. Chapter 4 described Egypt’s geography, climate, and early history. Peas may have attracted notice there because they mature rapidly and tolerate aridity. From southwestern Asia, peas moved north into Georgia in the fifth millennium BCE and east into Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India—assuming origin in southwestern Asia and not India—by 2000 BCE. During the second millennium BCE, peas migrated south through India. They entered Eastern Europe from Georgia by 2000 BCE, and during prehistory spread south into Greece, west into Switzerland and France, and northwest into Britain. Northern Europe’s cool climate suited the legume. Quick maturation permitted biannual crops, one in spring and another in autumn.

Because peas are nearly 80 percent water, what could not be eaten fresh was dried to prevent deterioration.³² Once dried, peas fortified soups and stews. The rhyme “pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot nine days old,” possibly dating to the high (c. 1000-c. 1300 CE) or late (c. 1300-c. 1500) Middle Ages, suggests that people ate the legume day after day.³³ Such monotony was unlikely voluntary but instead reflected meat’s expensiveness. Peas and other legumes—dubbed “poor man’s protein” or “poor man’s meat”—permitted survival despite infrequent access to animal products.³⁴ Peas’ protein sustained medieval commoners, most of whom “never tasted meat,” wrote American Egyptologist Robert Brier (b. 1943) and American philosopher A. Hoyt Hobbs.³⁵ This dependence intensified when grains were unavailable or expensive.³⁶ In this vein, Kaplan stated that the legume was “food of primary importance for the European peasantry of the Middle Ages.”³⁷ By the eleventh century, for example, Britons ate chiefly peas.³⁸

Between roughly 500 and 1500 CE, the Middle Ages spanned too vast a period for easy evaluation of health. The Black Death (1347-1351)—which killed around one-third of Europeans—and the macabre art and literature that followed it enshrouded the era in gloom, making tempting the assertion that Europe was an unhealthy place.³⁹ Chapter 3 listed the long series of recurrent famines before and after this catastrophe, heightening the perception that deprivation, disease, and death haunted the Middle Ages.

Military records, revealing a mean stature of 173.4 centimeters (68.3 inches) for northern European men between roughly 800 and 1300, challenge this negativity.⁴⁰ This average surpassed mean heights, discussed in Chapter 4, of nineteenth-century Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Comanche, Kiowa, and Sioux men on the Great Plains.⁴¹ Only Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Crow males stood taller in the nineteenth century, and these peoples were the world’s tallest.⁴² Crow men stood just 2 millimeters above those from medieval northern Europe, a trivial difference. Because nutrition and height correlate, as noted throughout this book, medieval northern Europeans were well nourished on peas even without meat and grains.

Peas were not the lone advantage. Food supply expanded as agriculture benefited from a warm climate between about 800 and 1300.⁴³ Warmth lengthened the growing season three or four weeks yearly. This interval’s end corresponded with the tallest Europeans. In addition to farm productivity, medieval Europe’s population, at least in the countryside, was sparse enough to reduce infectious diseases. Economic backwardness and meager trade further isolated Europe from contagion.⁴⁴ After 1300, the climate cooled, agriculture shrank, cod (Gadus morhua and G. macrocephalus) migrated to warmer waters, and European stature diminished.⁴⁵ These changes precipitated famines and the Black Death.

Besides the underclass, peas fed elites. Rome’s wealthy Piso family took its name from peas, declaring that its ancestors had been pea farmers who embodied the rural virtues of thrift, diligence, piety, and self-reliance.⁴⁶ Gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius (c. 25 BCE-c. 37 CE) was among several Romans who devised high-end pea recipes.⁴⁷ Medieval cookbooks expanded this focus to create dishes of peas, almonds, and spices.

In the eighth century, Frankish King Charlemagne (742-814), enjoying fresh peas, ordered peasants to plant them for his armies as they marched through the empire.⁴⁸ Scandinavians ate peas and pork. Peas soup, known as aertsoppa in Sweden, gula aerter in Denmark, harnekeitto in Finland, and arwtensoap in the Netherlands, nourished northern Europeans.⁴⁹ Sweden’s nobility, including King Eric XIV (1533-1577), favored it. Fondness for peas doomed the king, whose brother killed him by putting arsenic in his soup. In Florence, Italy, the wealthy Medicis ate fresh peas. In 1533, Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), having married French King Henry II (1519-1559), brought new pea varieties to France.⁵⁰ They must not have made converts because in 1695 King Louis XIV (1638— 1715) had to be persuaded to sample them.⁵¹ Delighted with the flavor, he commanded his gardener to plant them in royal greenhouses. Unlike beans, therefore, peas dodged being stigmatized as ordinary.

From their Asian origins, Italian-Spanish mariner Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) in 1493 planted peas on Caribbean island Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.⁵² Sixteenth- century Spain introduced peas to Mexico and Florida. In 1608, one year after the colony’s founding, the English brought peas to Jamestown, Virginia. In 1629, probably in a separate introduction, the Massachusetts Bay Colony began growing them. In the 1670s, food shortages in the Carolinas reduced each colonist to subsisting daily on half a liter (one pint) of peas.⁵³ The ration prevented starvation, implying that the legume preserved health. Third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) declared peas his favorite vegetable—Chapter 15 defines vegetables—cultivating them as early as 1767 at Monticello. Planting thirty varieties, he competed with neighbors to harvest the earliest peas.

Some seventeenth century Americans ate peas thrice daily. First Lady Martha Dandridge Custis Washington’s (1731-1802) Booke of Cookery, which circulated in manuscript, included recipes for pease porridge and pea soup with mint (Mentha species). American author Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery (1796) advised bakers to substitute peas for apples (Mains domestica) and other fruits in pies. The Virginia Housewife: Or Methodical Cook (1824) recommended that peas be cooked with butter and mint (Mentha species) and detailed recipes for pea soup with celery (Apium graveolens) and pease pudding with pork. In 1841, American author and editor Sarah Josepha Hale’s (1788-1879) The Good Housekeeper recommended soups of peas and spinach (Spinacia oleracea) or lettuce (Lactuca sativa). New Englanders ate peas with corned beef, thyme (Thymus vulgaris), and marjoram (Origanum majorana and O. onites). Cooks used pearl ash to soften old peas.

Today the French eat peas with lettuce, onions, and butter.⁵⁴ Cooks add peas to stir-fries and Thai curries, often combining them with shrimp (species in the infraorder Caridea). Spaniards consume peas, meat, and baked eggs. The Portuguese prefer peas with eggs. Iranians enjoy peas with lamb (Ovis dries). Germans make stew with peas, bacon, carrots, and celery. Pea soups are popular in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United States besides Sweden. Peruvians eat peas and shrimp stew. Brazilians pair peas with chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). Indians combine the legume with potatoes or paneer cheese. Like peanuts in the United States, roasted, salted peas are a snack in Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia. Pea leaves are a Chinese delicacy. Greeks and Turks, including those on Mediterranean island Cyprus, enjoy pea, meat, and potato stew.

Although one anecdote may not warrant extrapolation, in 1999, American journalist and food writer Raymond Sokolov (b. 1941) recounted an attempt to lose weight by eating only peas, drinking coffee (Coffea species) and diet sodas, and ingesting vitamin and mineral tablets.⁵⁵ With few calories, little fat, and no cholesterol, peas satisfied his criteria for wholesomeness. Sokolov calculated that a daily allocation of 1.1 kilograms (2.5 pounds) provided just 882 calories, a value near the USDA computation of 891 calories.⁵⁶ Table 8.4 tabulates this spartan fare’s calories and nutrients.⁵⁷

TABLE 8.4

Nutrients in Peas 1.1 kg

TABLE 8.5

Nutrients in Peas 141.6 g

Combined with coffee’s caffeine, Sokolov claimed enough nourishment and pep from peas for an hour’s vigorous workout each day.

This regimen recalls Carolina colonists’ subsistence on half a liter of peas per day. Making the appropriate conversions, this volume of peas has a mass of 141.6 grams, or just 12.9 percent of Sokolov’s ration.⁵⁸ Reducing energy and nutrients accordingly, each colonist had only 114 calories and 7.7 grams of protein daily. Table 8.5 summarizes this quantity’s calories and nutrients. Absence of deaths from starvation suggests that this austerity was brief and that colonists supplemented peas with whatever could be hunted or collected, though American food writer Meredith Sayles Hughes asserted that they ate little beyond peas.⁵⁹

Sokolov’s confession that the “pea diet is barbarous” implies preference for an alternative.⁶⁰ Had he substituted 1.1 kilograms of McDonald’s hamburger for peas, Table 8.6 shows that Sokolov would have consumed 2,904 calories; 142 grams of protein; 111 grams of fat; 14.3 grams of fiber; over the DV for calcium, iron, phosphorus, zinc, and vitamins B,, B₂, B„ and B_l2; 60 percent for potassium; 58 percent for magnesium; and 11 percent for vitamin C.⁶¹ The burger would have more than tripled peas’ calories while supplying less magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and vitamins

TABLE 8.6

Nutrients in McDonald's Hamburger 1.1 kg

B, and C. By mass, peas have over sixty-six times more vitamin C than the burger. Despite peas’ merits, Sokolov’s language demonstrates the folly of ignoring palatability and variety. Anything eaten to the exclusion of all else provokes backlash. Chapter 13 emphasizes that if one food must be favored, the potato supplies the most nutrients per unit mass. The tuber aside, this chapter lauds peas for furnishing ample nutriment at a fraction of convenience foods’ calories.