Pea soup

Pea soup is soup made, typically, from dried split 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 already 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 BCE. During that era, vendors in the streets of Athens were selling hot pea soup."

Pea soup around the world

The Netherlands

Erwtensoep (pronounced "EHR-ten-soup", 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.

See also: Erwtensoep (Dutch Wikipedia)

Sweden and Finland

As Finland was until 1809 part of the Swedish Realm, Sweden and Finland share many cultural traditions, including that of the yellow pea soup (Swedish ärtsoppa; Finnish hernekeitto), usually eaten on Thursdays, served with pork and mustard and accompanied by pancakes for dessert. The tradition of eating pea soup and pancakes on Thursdays is said to originate in the pre-Reformation era, as preparation for fasting on Friday.

Swedish pea soup normally includes pieces of pork – although it may sometimes be served on the side – and a typical recipe would also include some onion and spices such as thyme and marjoram. It is usually eaten with some mustard, often accompanied by crisp bread and the sweet liquor punsch (served hot), and always with pancakes for dessert. Mustard is an important part of the dish, but the soup is served without it so that diners can stir it in to taste.

Thursday pea soup is common in restaurants and households and often an unpretentious but well-liked part of social life. Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson (1885-1946) had a circle of friends, jokingly referred to as the "peralbinians" (peralbinerna), who for a number of years came to his home every Thursday to eat pea soup, drink hot punsch and play bridge.

The death of deposed and imprisoned king Eric XIV in 1577 is usually said to have followed on the eating of a bowl of poisoned pea soup; a 20th century investigation of his remains indeed found traces of arsenic, and there is historical evidence that his brother John had the intention to poison him, but the tradition about the pea soup as a vessel for the poison has not been possible to confirm.

In Finland, pea soup (hernekeitto) is a very common food, and as already mentioned traditionally eaten on Thursdays accompanied by pancakes. During World War II, the Finnish army was fed with hernekeitto. The army still retains the tradition, serving conscripts pea soup, with pancakes for dessert, for dinner every Thursday. Pea soup is also often served for large crowds in gatherings, simply because it is easy to make in large amounts and most people will like it to some extent. Finns learn to eat pea soup as children, and it is a quite popular school food. Students like it, because it is fast and easy to make and it is relatively cheap.

Pork meat or carrots can be added and a piquant taste is reached with Finnish mustard.

England and the 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 original form of the word "peas." According to the Baring-Goulds, pease porridge was "a thin pudding," which presumably would be the same thing as a thick soup.

In 19th century English literature, pea soup is referred to as a simple food and eating it as a sign of poverty. In a Thackeray novel, when a character asks his wife "Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years," she replies, with "a look of ineffable scorn," that when "the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!" In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Tess remarks that "we have several proofs that we are d'Urbervilles... we have a very old silver spoon, round in the bowl like a little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But it is so worn that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup."

Canada

Soupe aux pois (yellow pea soup) is a signature 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."

Australia

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

United States

In the United States, pea soup is merely one of many familiar kinds of soup, often prepared from canned or powdered concentrate. "Pea soup" without qualification usually means a perfectly smooth puree; "split pea soup" is a thinner soup with visible peas, pieces of ham, and other vegetables. It is made from green peas. Most cookbooks will contain a pea soup recipe or two, but pea soup has no particular cultural resonance. The culturally analogous dried legume would probably be the bean (Phaseolus spp.) Bean soup (made from white beans) has been a featured menu item of the restaurants of the House of Representatives and the Senate for over a century.

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 (but this is a result of demonic possession).

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 (1877) 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); "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."

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..."

External links

• Ärtans Vänner Philadelphia Friends of the Pea Soup Swedish-language website about Philadelphians who preserve the Swedish custom of eating pea soup on Thursdays
• Pea Soup Andersen's restaurant A California restaurant founded in the 1920s.
• The Homely Fare's of Sweden Detailed article about the Thursday pea soup tradition
• Peas: History, Uses, Folklore, Growing, Nutrition, Purchasing, Preparation, Recipe "vendors in the streets of [classical] Athens were selling hot pea soup"
• French Canadian Pea Soup Quebec soupe aux pois vs. Newfoundland pea soup
• Dutch food and eating habits "You should be able to stand a spoon upright in a good pea soup."