This article is from the 1850 Cottage Gardener and Country Gentleman's Companion, Volume 3. I haven't found much more about this fad than a retelling of this article. Perhaps we should take it with a grain of salt?
It would not be either unamusing or uninstructive to trace the rise and progress of the taste for Green Peas.They were a luxury unknown to our early Saxon ancestors, for they had no varieties but the common grey pea; and though we have frequent mention of beans being eaten by them, we have never met with any such particular concerning the pea. Soon after the Norman Conquest, however, at monasteries and other establishments where gardening was cherished, we find that this vegetable was among those most desired. Thus, at Barking Nunnery, among other things, there were provided green peas against Midsummer.
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| detail from a P.J. Redouté illustration |
And, in the household book of a nobleman (Archaologia, xiii. 373), it is directed:
" If one will have Pease soone in the year following, such pease are to be sowen in the wane of the moone, at St. Andrew's tide, before Christmas."
“St. Andrew’s Tide”- on and around 30th November.
In the 17th century there seems to have been a mania in France for the Skinless pea (Pois sans parchmeine). Bonnefonds, in his Jardinier Francais published in 1651, describes them as the Dutch pea, or pea without skin, and adds:—
" Until very lately they were exceedingly rare."
Roquefort says, they were first introduced by M. de Buhl, the French ambassador in Holland, about 1600.
The author of a Life of Colbert, 1695, says,
"It is frightful to see persons sensual enough to purchase green pease at the price of 50 crowns per litron."
• In 2015, the relative value of 5s from 1850 ranges from £24.11 to £840.40. Five shillings equal a crown so conservatively the peas cost £1,205.00.!• A litron was a little more than an English pint.)
This kind of pompous expenditure prevailed much at the French Court, as will be seen by a letter of Madame de Maintenon, dated May 10, 1696.
"The subject of peas continues to absorb all others: the anxiety to eat them, the pleasure of having eaten them, and the desire to eat them again, are the three great matters which have been discussed by our princes for four days past.
Some ladies, even after having supped at the royal table, and well supped too, returning to their own homes, at the risk of suffering from indigestion, will again eat peas, before going to bed. It is both a fashion and a madness".
The taste was not confined to France; and when, upon the Restoration of Charles II, it became the popular and prudential habit to publish all the disadvantageous anecdotes, true and untrue, that could be collected, concerning the Cromwell dynasty, we rend, amongst others,
"That Oliver was very fond of oranges to veal, and that the Protectress refused fourpence for one, just at the commencement of the Spanish war! Moreover, that a poor woman, having a very early growth of peas, was persuaded to present some to the Protectress, though offered an angel (10s.) for them by a cook in the Strand. The Protectress only gave her 5s. for them ; and, upon the woman murmuring, returned them, with some severe remarks upon the increase of luxury."
The taste, however, increased rather than abated, and extended to late green peas as strongly as to early; for on the 28th of October, 1769, it is recorded that four guineas were given for as many pottles of them in Covent Garden Market. Our memory fails us if we have not lately heard of as much as ten guineas a quart being paid by the civic authorities for shelled green peas.
from £101.30 to £3,530.00. (A guinea was £1 plus 1 shilling.)
• pottle: A former unit of volume, equivalent to half a gallon, used for liquids and corn; a
pot of around this size.
I must credit E. Lewis Sturtevant for the phrase "This kind of pompous expenditure prevailed much at the French Court, as will be seen by a letter of Madame de Maintenon, dated May 10, 1696" which I inserted into the original article.
