November 5, 2025 • 34 mins
The seemingly humble garden pea has soil superpowers, caused a medieval craze, and drove Orson Welles to distraction. Come along with Anney and Lauren as they give world peas a chance in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode,
a classic episode for you about peas.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yes, yeah, yes. Was there any particular reason that this
was on your mind? To bring back Lauren? Uh?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
You know, so this one came out in August of
twenty eighteen, so it was a minute ago. And you know,
I think I was thinking about pea soup. I've been
on a soup kick, and you know, I think it
is time that I purchased a hamhock and make some
(00:49):
split pea soup. Oh wow, have you ever made it before? No,
it's like a go to rest. This is no, no, no, no,
this is new. So but I again, yeah, I'm like, yeah,
let's make some new soups.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I want to hear all about this, Lauren knows. But
I am fascinated with p soup for number a number
of reasons.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
We go over it a little bit in this episode.
But your first association with it is not a food item.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
No no, But I am very interested in the fact that,
and I have only very briefly looked into it. So
I don't know how true this is but I feel
like it had kind of a period where it was
so fancy. It was like fancy restaurants served it. And
this could be because of the Rescuers the Disney movie.
(01:44):
It was very fancy in there. So again, I don't
know the full truth, but I've wanted to do an
episode ones P for a while.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Maybe that's an upcoming one. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know it.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Well, listeners, you can write in and let us know.
I have to say, I know I talk about it
in here. I do love peas, and my mom recently
bought me fresh peas and they were the best. It
was like, oh, she bought me like a steak and peas,
and I was more excited about the peace.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Really good peas are really good, yes, and you forget
sometimes from like nothing but frozen or canned peas, but
they are delightful, as we talk about in this episode,
which I also found so delightful. Honestly, y'all, not all
of our not all of our work from twenty eighteen
was completely aces, but I think that this one is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, I suppose we should let pass Annie and Lauren
take it away. Hello, and welcome to Foodstuff I'm Anny Rees.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
And I'm Lauren Vocal Bomb, and today we're talking about peace.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
If you please, and I do please. Excellent because we're
talking about it either way, So I'm glad that you
do please talk about peace. That is a rhyme fyi
that my dad used to say every time we had peas,
and I could never figure out if it was an
actual poem or if he just said it because it rhymed.
(03:30):
But if you're curious where I get all of my
love of bad puns and every play, everything's falling into place.
That is one piece of the puzzle, And it turns
out doing peas I had a couple of weird memories
associated with them. One is, have you heard of the
(03:51):
English nest?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
No, I have no idea. You wrote that note in
the notes and I was like, well, okay.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I wonder if anyone else Is this just some weird
thing that made up in my family? Well, okay, so
the English nest, And I'm pretty sure I read a
story about it in one of those literature textbooks high school,
so I think it's a thing. It's where you get
your mashed potatoes and you make a little indent in
them and then you put the peas in there, and
(04:16):
it looks like a bird's nest with eggs in it. Oh,
and then you eat it and it's good. It's an
odd but good mixture. Okay, okay, so please write it
if that's it's not just me that did that. It
usually came with ham as well, at least in my family.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Okay, what did the ham represent?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Oh my goodness, I guess I'd be like a hawk
destroying your nest.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Oh wow, goodness.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Or maybe it's just a pig that just took.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
A dark turn. Okay, well, yes, there is also, of course,
the fairy Tale of the Princess and the.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Peak, Yes, which I was one of my favorite stories
as a kid. I had a pretty I bought it
at the book fair. And side note, I miss the
book fair so much. That was such an exciting day.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You think about this all the time, And I mean,
like we have, I mean I have access to plenty
of books. I also have like real money and like
bookstores nearby that I could go to, but like the
book fair, it was so exciting.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, get to get out of class and look around
at books in a little shop sometimes. But I bought
the Princess and the p at one of my first
book fairs, and it was so beautifully illustrated. It's longer
than the one I found in the public domain, because
we recently did that Food for k episode and I
was like, ah, Princess and Pete, it was like two
(05:38):
paragraphs long. The one I have is not much longer,
but it's longer than that, probably so it would have
more pages and they could sell it for more well,
you know, anyway, I'm sure it had.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Lovely illustrations as well. Did it have lovely illustrations?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
It did? And does I still have it? It's one
of the There are a couple of books I could
not get rid of, like children's books, and that that
is one. So maybe I'll bring it in. Yeah, you
can take a look. Absolutely, But we're getting we're getting
away from our first question, so let's return to it peace.
What are they?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Peas are the fruit of a climbing vine scientific name
Pisum sativum. The vine flowers and pea pods grow from
those flowers. You know, these like long, skinny, yellow or
green containers that plump up with seeds as the seeds develop. Now,
I said that those pods are fruit and botanically they are,
(06:35):
but they're more commonly called legomes, and legome is the
word for the fruit of a plant in the family Fibasi.
Thanks to listener Kelsey for writing in the last time
I mispronounced it a little bit. I was going off
a four of you dot COM's Latin pronunciation. I don't
know anyway, but back in the day, the Phibasi family
was called the Leguminosi, not the laguminati. Ah, the laguminos.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I wanted her so badly to say that.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
But hence hence the name legomes. These fruits typically consist
of a pod with two long seams, you know, on
each side, and the pod contains high protein, high fiber seeds.
Some varietals of peas and sativam have edible pods, like
saccaratum snow peas and macrocarpond or sugar snaps, but today
(07:30):
we're talking mostly about non edible potted peas.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
This is a non edible potted peas podcast. It's great
branding for this episode.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
So, so, the seeds develop in these pods, you know,
wee green or yellow spheres, and you can either let
the whole fruit ripen and then stop growing and dry
out on the vine and then shell the dry peas
and save them either to plant later or to cook
in liquid so that they rehydrate. These dried peas are
sometimes hold that is that the skin is taken off,
(08:03):
leaving just the inner bit, which will often split into
two halves at that point, and these are split.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Peas, Oh I see.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Or you can pick the fruit when the seeds are
still immature, you shell them and either eat them or
cook the peas fresh or freeze them or can them
for later. And at this point they might be called the.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Garden pea, green peas, English peas, so many names for peas.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Oh you can please, Oh my goodness. They're a little sweet,
a little savory, slash earthy, sort of fresh and grassy,
and have a texture a little bit like potatoes like
cream eat and meally speaking of mashed potatoes, yeah, I
guess those would go well together, right. The skin of
the pea can create a pleasant like burst or snap
(08:51):
when you bite into one. You can also soak dried
peas overnight and then coat them with some kind of
flavoring like a wassabi flavored rice flour, for example, and
then fry them in oil or hot air or roast them,
which leaves them sort of dehydrated and crispy with saabipas.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So good, so good.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
The leaves are also used as a vegetable or herb
in parts of Asia and Africa, and they are an
annual plant, which means that they die off after a
single growing season and further crops need to be replanted
from seed. They also, like many other legumes, have this
amazing and fascinating symbiotic relationship with bacteria that live in
(09:30):
the soil around their roots. All right, here's a gig.
These bacteria need sugars produced by photosynthesis to live, but
the bacteria themselves cannot photosynthesize, so they form colonies, these
little nodules on the pea's roots. Meanwhile, the pea plants
need nitrogen to create chlorophyll and a bunch of other
(09:51):
important stuff like like various proteins, but they can't use
free ranging nitrogen in the air. They can't absorb it,
even though it's one of the most abundant elements in
our atmosphere. So in turn, the bacteria breathe in nitrogen
from the air and process that nitrogen into ammonia, which
plants can use. This process is called nitrogen fixation, and
(10:14):
peas and other lagomes, along with their little bacteria buddies,
fix so much nitrogen in the soil that there's a
surplus even after the peas growing season is over. They
leave the land better than they found it. Oh yeah,
So for this reason, lagomes are a popular crop to
plant in rotation with other crops that deplete the soil,
and gardeners can use peas like alongside other vegetables to
(10:36):
reduce or ideally eliminate the need to fertilize.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Way to go. Peas. Yeah, good for the earth. But
are they good for you?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
We're talking nutrition. Yes, yes. Peas have a decent amount
of protein, potassium, iron, calcium, amino acids, and complex carbs.
They are a low fat, low sodium food and they
show up in all kinds of things, some healthier than others.
Pasta soups, the notorious pea soup.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Oh I love a split pea soup.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Oh do you?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I don't think I've ever had one outside of once
when I was a kid, and The Exorcist is the
only thing I can envision. They show up frequently in
fried rice. There's peat flour and pea protein, just to
name a few.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
These days, there's also pea milk, oh yeah, and pea
yogurt on the market for folks who want their dairy
alternatives to be soy and nut free. Personally, I think
the pea yogurt tastes not good.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Oh I have not had it.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It's one of the very few foods that I've ever
been like, Nope, not this one.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Why what was it? What was the taste like? Oh,
it was just sort of well, the face you're making
is not good.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
It was sort of planty. It was sort of like
I was eating like a salad yogurt or like a.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
But like, oh, that's not that's what Google thinks of women,
right there, not a salad bluss yogurt, but not in
a nice way.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I was not a woman and laughing alone with salad yogurt?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Well who is?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Though?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
My salads are frequently hilarious good that makes me happy
most of the time.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I'm just kind of like, this is okay. I was joking. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Back to peas. Frozen peas, I will say, are just
as nutritious as fresh peas, and they are the most
common frozen vegetable in the United States.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Woo.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, Like, frozen peas are popular here to the point
that it's really hard to find fresh peas outside of
like farmer's markets or your own garden. Yes, Bonea Petite
ran a headline in twenty seventeen PSA, frozen peas are
actually better than fresh bold words, I know.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
The article is touting frozen peas convenience and quality and
ability to be cooked into dishes without being thawed first,
and to be fair, peas that are frozen like a
couple hours out of the field. When they are frozen
and they're they're sorted using this fun saltwater process, like
like a really specific gravity of salt water to make
(13:10):
sure that only the younger, more tender less starchy ones
make it into packaging. The tender ones float to the top,
the starchy ones sink in this specific saltwater solution. And
there's no such guarantee on peas that you shell yourself. Folks.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I'll have to tell my mom that, because if you
remember in our Frozen Food episode, every summer we buy
so many peas at the farmers market here in Atlanta,
the one off of seventy five South. For you, Laura
and everyone else. It's like, oh, it's a really big
farmer's market.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And we blanch them and we freeze them, and the
blanching hurts.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
It hurts because your hands are hot and then they're cold,
and then you do it again until we usually get
twenty like freezer size bags of peas and we put
them in this lock chest freezer. And I never see it,
you know, because I don't live at home anymore, so
I'm putting all this work into it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Why doesn't she give you some to take home?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I think I probably say no. I'm like, I'd never
want to see peas again, And then like a week later,
I'm over it and I'm thinking, wow, I really wish
I had some of those fresh peas. They do usually
turn out very well, very delicious.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I believe you.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Fresh. Crispy, well crunchy is how I like them.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah. On an industrial level, the sheer volume involved in
creating frozen peas within hours of the crops being picked
means that farmers have to stagger their plantings and their
pickings so that the freezing facility they're working with will
have the capacity to take their harvest when the peas
are ripe enough it's this whole like Labrinthian schedule. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I yeah, I would love to just to observe for
a little bit. Maybe that would put my struggles in perspective.
Ah my one day of struggle a year with peas.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I maintain there has to be some better way than
plunging your hands into hot peas and ice.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
My mom does it. It's like like a pro spoons.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Perhaps it probably is a really happy if you heard
of slotted spoons.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Slotted spoons, you say.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I do say.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Oh man, I'm gonna have to think about this.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Let's look at the numbers.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, let's look at the numbers. Somewhere around twelve to
seventeen point four million tons of peas are produced a year.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And I was I was trying to dig into this
number and I couldn't. I'm not sure if that's just
dried peas. I think it might be just dried peas.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
That's wild because because I.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Kept seeing like, like about twelve million tons of dried
peas every year, and I and there's there's hypothetically a
lot of fresh frozen peas.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
From what we've been discussing, it seems logical.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I think that there could be at least at anyway,
there's a lot of peas. There's a lot of peas,
and mortar intelligence for once failed me on the fresh
pea thing.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
They're busy trying to capture hobbits. We can't blame them
for that.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh it's not my fault. Someone named a company that.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Anyway, They're native to North Africa and Asia, and you
can still find wild peas in parts of Iran, Ethiopia
and Afghanistan. Canada was the largest producer in two thousand, though,
with China, Russia and France following its lead. And this
is another food that's eaten all over in all kinds
of different ways. In parts of Asia, dried peas are
(16:38):
a popular snack and addition to stir fries, that's a
pretty popular choice. Mushy peas in England, usually with your
your fish and chips.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Perhaps sure Note, however, that we are mostly not talking
about American Southern field peas like black eyed peas and
other black brown, cream red type peas, which are more
like beans and tend to take more earthy. A lot
of things are called peas. Yeah they really are, which
(17:06):
is a good segue to our history segment, but a
bad segue to an ad But first we're going to
take you on that ad break and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Thank you, so yes. Some of the history gets a
little murky because there are three main types of peas
that sometimes get confused for each other when we're talking
about history. Peas were one of the first domesticated plants
around eight thousand years ago, most likely in the Middle
East or South or Central Asia. They are one of
(17:49):
the eight founder crops or eight of the earliest domesticated
crops ever. From there, the peace soon appeared in China
and India. If that's not where it originated in the
first place, oh history. If we're talking pre domestication, some
evidence suggest the Neanderthals were eating peas forty six thousand
(18:11):
years ago. Might not be the same pea, though I
would say probably not the same pea, probably not. Other
evidence suggests that two types of peas were each domesticated
from a now extinct ancestor about eleven thousand years ago
in the Near East. The first known evidence of purposeful
pea cultivation is out of Syria nine three hundred years ago.
(18:35):
Those domesticating the pea did so selectively attempting to get
to a softer, shelled, wet season ready crop. Ancient Greeks, Egyptians,
Romans all enjoyed peas in their cuisine. The Epicios, that
really old cookbook recipe book had nine recipes that utilized
dried peas. Pea soup was a common to go item
(18:59):
sold by streetman. There's an ancient Athens, which I find
very curious. Indeed, one story goes that after Romans encountered it,
they named it piece them and that is where the
name comes from. But about that name, okay, So, originally
(19:20):
peas as in p ea s was the name for
a single P until the late seventeenth century when it
became known as the plural. So people seeing this peas
thought that that was the plural of oh.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It would say it out loud and say peace, and
then from there you get the singular p.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yes, So it was kind of a big misunderstanding.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Oh but people were saying pieces pieces, Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I know, let's go back to that. We can try
it perfect. But you can still see peas in the
rhyme peas poor it hot, which I don't know but
apparently is a lasting rhyme.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Peace porge, hot peace, porge, cold peace porge, and a
pot nine days old.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Look at you, Lauren font You really are always surprising
me with these rhymes about peas and other things. Peace
itself is possibly way way older, pre Indo European, maybe
even a g in Wow. I went on a hunt
to prove that Peace was related to Pisa, as in
(20:29):
Leaning Tower.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Of But no die oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
But Pisa is in its family tree. If like a
word family tree, I'm really bummed about it. But you
can't always get what you want.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
That's good, good life advice.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Any The Rolling Stones taught me that peas reached China
in seventh century CE, possibly called foreign legume piece at
this time maybe eaten fresh, but we're commonly dry dried.
Peas were a big time winter food. These peas were
more closely resembled to chickpeas, though Charlemagne had peas planted
(21:10):
in his gardens in eight hundred c e France, and
at the same time peas were a popular staple for peasants,
which I also went on a word hunt to see
if peasants and peas was related, and it's not, or
at least I didn't find any evidence that it was well.
They stored well and they kept for a long time,
so they were a good peasant food. And green peas
(21:33):
for lent were stored in the Barking Nunnery in twelfth
century London. A century later in France, fresh peas in
the pod was a popular street food item. They would
go on become a go to food for lant in
France and England.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Full of protein, you know meat.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And I think for back when we had big family
dinners when I was younger on Easter, I believe we
had peace.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
It's a pretty popular spring fresh peas or a good
spring spring thing. They are a little bit of mint
and lemon.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Maybe. In sixteenth century Italy, gardeners cultivated a smaller tender
pee called Pizzelli Novelli. People loved these things. It was
the fashion, the fashion to eat unripe peas.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well by by unripe just like yeah, like immature, yeah,
green peas, because previously most of them had been eaten dried.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, and all the way up until seventeenth century, people
were sort of head over heels in love with these things.
A female friend of the Sun King, Louis the fourteenth
had this to say about fresh peas, which could be
wildly expensive. By the way, this subject of peas continues
to absorb all of us. Some ladies, even after having
(22:53):
supped at the royal table and well supped too, returning
to their homes at the risk of suffering from indigestion,
well again, eat peas before going to bed. It is
both a fashion and a madness. I mean, I mean
they're good. They are good.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I mean they're real good.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
They are. They have such an interesting texture thing going on.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, it's that pop and then the kind of creamy thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
It's one of my favorite dishes that I had in England.
Just again like peas, a little bit of lemon, little
bit of mint.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They were just so.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Green, they are very bright. They were just so I
felt like they tasted like the land and the air.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Oh now I'm gonna ash to get peas in every episode.
This happens every episode almost And I have a slight
aside because during this episode, the main reason I wanted
to do it was mostly because of genetics. Won't get
into that more later, but I did a lot of
these memories got jumbled around in my head. Did you
(23:58):
ever play. Well wait a minute, did you take what language?
Did you take as Spanish? Spanish? Okay, so you didn't
play this game. No, anyone who took French please write
in if you remember playing the game The Sun King
game where you were wandering around is court and trying
to please people like it was a computer game that
we would play in French class to learn French, and
(24:20):
I just totally forgot about it. I remember it being
incredibly frustrating. You could never figure out what they wanted,
which might have been the lesson.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Oh wow, and that's a little bit existential for what
like middle school? But yeah, sure, all.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Right, Well, speaking of fashion, that trend setter Catherine de
Medici introduced peas to France during the fifteen hundreds, and
the French named them tiny peas petipois. Due to the
popularity of peas in France, some towns were named after
recipes associated with their town that incorporated peas. Street vendors
(24:56):
in England advertised their hot gray peas with a called
bacon around this time as well. New varieties developed in
England around this time were known as garden peas and
English peace. Yeah. So that's some europe for you Europe
really digging into the stash of peas. We do have
(25:18):
some some New World stuff, but first we have one
last quick break forward from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. The colonists brought peas
(25:40):
with them to the New World. In quotes, they kept
well and were good for voyages, so kind of an
obvious choice to take with you. Settlers in Canada's New
France bought with them pea soup. If you remember at
the beginning we said top grower was Canada and France
was in the top five. I'll find that really kind
(26:02):
of there's interesting pe legacy. There is a p legacy,
and once again it's time to talk about someone else
with a legacy. Thomas Jefferson. He and his neighbors engaged
in a battle of the peas to see who could
grow them in their garden first, and Thomas Jefferson came
(26:23):
out in front.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Hopping back over to Europe.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
In the seventeen nineties, peas appeared in their first genetics study,
one led by Thomas Andrew Knight.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, and of course genetics weren't I mean, it's technically
what he was studying. He didn't know it at the time,
but he was working with different colored peas and observing
how cross fertilizing them could affect the color of future generations.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
France's eighteen hundred's Encyclopedia The Vegetable Garden included fifty pages
on different types of peas.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, and then along comes one Gregor Mendel in the
eighteen sixties. Mendel was an Austrian monk who realized that
some pea traits were more dominant than others. He carried
out a series of experiments that were the precursor to
the laws of genetic inheritance. While he died pretty much
as an unknown, his research came back into the scientific
(27:19):
zeitgeist in the nineteen hundreds and his contributions to genetics
was recognized.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, he's currently called like like the father of genetics
in some circles. And Mendel was using pea plants because
they're inexpensive, they're easy to grow and keep track of,
easier even than mice and honeybees, which is what he
started with. Part of why his work didn't catch on
during the time was that the prevailing theory was that
offspring are blend of their parents' traits. You know, like
(27:45):
if you've got a tall mom and a short dad,
you'll be of medium height. So therefore, what Mendel was saying,
you know that two tall parents can produce a short
offspring because the short trait may have been inherited. Just recessive, right.
It was unintuitive to people at the time, especially because
(28:06):
humans are more genetically complicated than pea plants. But no
one knew about genes yet, so it seemed really easily dismissed.
But yet his concepts of receiving a random assortment of
traits from each parent half of the traits that they
had each inherited from their parents would become the basis
of chromosomal heredity. In the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
The Humble Pee, the Humble Pee, the Campbell Company. Yes,
that Campbell Company chows peas as one of the first
things to can in eighteen seventy, as mentioned in our
Frozen Foods episode. They were also some of the first
vegetables to be frozen around the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And speaking of frozen peas, yes, there is this absolutely
bizarre and delightful moment and relatively recent history in which
famed actor writer and director Orson Welles absolutely pitched a
fit while attempting to record a few commercials, one being
for frozen peas. Another one was for cod fish fingers.
(29:10):
And I can't believe I forgot that when we were
doing our cod episode all anyway, this this fit he pitched.
This was This was after he reportedly made the recording
crew chase him all over Europe, like at least five
locations around Europe, a sort of revenge for them requesting
(29:30):
an audition.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
How dare they?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
This happened around nineteen seventy, so he was he was
already quite famous and really infamous also over being pretty persnickety,
and had taken to doing ads to help pay for
his pet projects. And I think we can roll a
little bit of this here because oh it's that's gold.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire where Missus Buckley lives.
Every July, peas grow there. Do you really mean that?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah? So you know i'd start half a second late.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Don't you think you really want to say July over
the snow? Isn't that the fun of it? It's if
you can make it almost when that shot disappears, it'll
make mine. I think it's so nice that that you
see a snow covered field and say, every July, peas
grow there. We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire where
Missus Buckley lives. Every July, peas grow there. We aren't
(30:25):
even in the fields you see. We're talking about him
growing and she's picked.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Him in July.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I don't understand you. Then, when must what must be
over for July? When we get out of that snowy field.
When I was out, we were onto a can of peas,
a big dish of peace. When I said in July,
that's just idiotic. If you'll forgive me, if I say so,
that's just stupid in July. I'd love to know how
you emphasize in and in July.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
We just actually played a little bit of it in
the studio here, Annie, Do you have any thoughts, feelings, reactions.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I love how his tone is very like even the
whole time it sounds reasonable, but what he's saying is
super unreasonable, super unreasonable. And I told Lauren, I don't
know what part we played, but I'm determined to say
you don't know what I'm up against in a like
straight voice.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, in regular conversation. Yeah, maybe by the end of
the day. I think you can. I have faith in
you can.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I think I can. Yeah, he calls from Orson.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But yeah, if if that sounds familiar to anyone who
has never actually listened to that Orson Wells clip, but
who was perhaps watching Animaniacs or The Critic back in
the nineteen nineties, that's because Maurice LaMarsh, Who's wells impersonation
is super on point, and what I would say the
(31:53):
Brain character is based on. He did it pretty much
verbatim in Pinky and the Brain, except he like put
in family friendly phrasing for a few things, and he
also parodied it in The Critic. So yeah, you can.
You can look up the full audio under the names
Yes Always or or Frozen Peas if you just want
(32:18):
a real good giggle, I recommend it.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Now that you pointed out yes the Brain so much,
very much. Oh that's so scared me as a kid,
I wonder, and I could never put my finger on
why huh. It just really unsettled me.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It did, but in a way that I liked. Then again,
I'm like, I was a little bit older than you at.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
The time, so I might have Yeah, I should, I
should revisit it and see if I can figure out
what it was put me so on edge that show.
Maybe it was the Arson wild impression. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I don't know, but uh yeah, that's uh, that's the
story of Frozen peace and peace in general.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yes, and that brings us to the end of this
classic episode. We hope that you found it as delightful
as we found it bringing it back.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. Oh and if you have any
insider information or recipes about pea soup, let us know.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yes, please, I've been long thinking about this, but also
any p related recipes.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, I'll share.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Well, you can email all of that to us Hello
at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Or get in touch via social media. We are on
Blue Sky and Instagram at savor pod, and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducer Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(34:03):
we hope that lots of market things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode,
a classic episode for you about peas.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yes, yeah, yes. Was there any particular reason that this
was on your mind? To bring back Lauren? Uh?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
You know, so this one came out in August of
twenty eighteen, so it was a minute ago. And you know,
I think I was thinking about pea soup. I've been
on a soup kick, and you know, I think it
is time that I purchased a hamhock and make some
(00:49):
split pea soup. Oh wow, have you ever made it before? No,
it's like a go to rest. This is no, no, no, no,
this is new. So but I again, yeah, I'm like, yeah,
let's make some new soups.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I want to hear all about this, Lauren knows. But
I am fascinated with p soup for number a number
of reasons.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
We go over it a little bit in this episode.
But your first association with it is not a food item.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
No no, But I am very interested in the fact that,
and I have only very briefly looked into it. So
I don't know how true this is but I feel
like it had kind of a period where it was
so fancy. It was like fancy restaurants served it. And
this could be because of the Rescuers the Disney movie.
(01:44):
It was very fancy in there. So again, I don't
know the full truth, but I've wanted to do an
episode ones P for a while.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Maybe that's an upcoming one. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know it.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Well, listeners, you can write in and let us know.
I have to say, I know I talk about it
in here. I do love peas, and my mom recently
bought me fresh peas and they were the best. It
was like, oh, she bought me like a steak and peas,
and I was more excited about the peace.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Really good peas are really good, yes, and you forget
sometimes from like nothing but frozen or canned peas, but
they are delightful, as we talk about in this episode,
which I also found so delightful. Honestly, y'all, not all
of our not all of our work from twenty eighteen
was completely aces, but I think that this one is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, I suppose we should let pass Annie and Lauren
take it away. Hello, and welcome to Foodstuff I'm Anny Rees.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
And I'm Lauren Vocal Bomb, and today we're talking about peace.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
If you please, and I do please. Excellent because we're
talking about it either way, So I'm glad that you
do please talk about peace. That is a rhyme fyi
that my dad used to say every time we had peas,
and I could never figure out if it was an
actual poem or if he just said it because it rhymed.
(03:30):
But if you're curious where I get all of my
love of bad puns and every play, everything's falling into place.
That is one piece of the puzzle, And it turns
out doing peas I had a couple of weird memories
associated with them. One is, have you heard of the
(03:51):
English nest?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
No, I have no idea. You wrote that note in
the notes and I was like, well, okay.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I wonder if anyone else Is this just some weird
thing that made up in my family? Well, okay, so
the English nest, And I'm pretty sure I read a
story about it in one of those literature textbooks high school,
so I think it's a thing. It's where you get
your mashed potatoes and you make a little indent in
them and then you put the peas in there, and
(04:16):
it looks like a bird's nest with eggs in it. Oh,
and then you eat it and it's good. It's an
odd but good mixture. Okay, okay, so please write it
if that's it's not just me that did that. It
usually came with ham as well, at least in my family.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Okay, what did the ham represent?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Oh my goodness, I guess I'd be like a hawk
destroying your nest.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Oh wow, goodness.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Or maybe it's just a pig that just took.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
A dark turn. Okay, well, yes, there is also, of course,
the fairy Tale of the Princess and the.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Peak, Yes, which I was one of my favorite stories
as a kid. I had a pretty I bought it
at the book fair. And side note, I miss the
book fair so much. That was such an exciting day.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You think about this all the time, And I mean,
like we have, I mean I have access to plenty
of books. I also have like real money and like
bookstores nearby that I could go to, but like the
book fair, it was so exciting.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, get to get out of class and look around
at books in a little shop sometimes. But I bought
the Princess and the p at one of my first
book fairs, and it was so beautifully illustrated. It's longer
than the one I found in the public domain, because
we recently did that Food for k episode and I
was like, ah, Princess and Pete, it was like two
(05:38):
paragraphs long. The one I have is not much longer,
but it's longer than that, probably so it would have
more pages and they could sell it for more well,
you know, anyway, I'm sure it had.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Lovely illustrations as well. Did it have lovely illustrations?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
It did? And does I still have it? It's one
of the There are a couple of books I could
not get rid of, like children's books, and that that
is one. So maybe I'll bring it in. Yeah, you
can take a look. Absolutely, But we're getting we're getting
away from our first question, so let's return to it peace.
What are they?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Peas are the fruit of a climbing vine scientific name
Pisum sativum. The vine flowers and pea pods grow from
those flowers. You know, these like long, skinny, yellow or
green containers that plump up with seeds as the seeds develop. Now,
I said that those pods are fruit and botanically they are,
(06:35):
but they're more commonly called legomes, and legome is the
word for the fruit of a plant in the family Fibasi.
Thanks to listener Kelsey for writing in the last time
I mispronounced it a little bit. I was going off
a four of you dot COM's Latin pronunciation. I don't
know anyway, but back in the day, the Phibasi family
was called the Leguminosi, not the laguminati. Ah, the laguminos.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I wanted her so badly to say that.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
But hence hence the name legomes. These fruits typically consist
of a pod with two long seams, you know, on
each side, and the pod contains high protein, high fiber seeds.
Some varietals of peas and sativam have edible pods, like
saccaratum snow peas and macrocarpond or sugar snaps, but today
(07:30):
we're talking mostly about non edible potted peas.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
This is a non edible potted peas podcast. It's great
branding for this episode.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
So, so, the seeds develop in these pods, you know,
wee green or yellow spheres, and you can either let
the whole fruit ripen and then stop growing and dry
out on the vine and then shell the dry peas
and save them either to plant later or to cook
in liquid so that they rehydrate. These dried peas are
sometimes hold that is that the skin is taken off,
(08:03):
leaving just the inner bit, which will often split into
two halves at that point, and these are split.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Peas, Oh I see.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Or you can pick the fruit when the seeds are
still immature, you shell them and either eat them or
cook the peas fresh or freeze them or can them
for later. And at this point they might be called the.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Garden pea, green peas, English peas, so many names for peas.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Oh you can please, Oh my goodness. They're a little sweet,
a little savory, slash earthy, sort of fresh and grassy,
and have a texture a little bit like potatoes like
cream eat and meally speaking of mashed potatoes, yeah, I
guess those would go well together, right. The skin of
the pea can create a pleasant like burst or snap
(08:51):
when you bite into one. You can also soak dried
peas overnight and then coat them with some kind of
flavoring like a wassabi flavored rice flour, for example, and
then fry them in oil or hot air or roast them,
which leaves them sort of dehydrated and crispy with saabipas.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So good, so good.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
The leaves are also used as a vegetable or herb
in parts of Asia and Africa, and they are an
annual plant, which means that they die off after a
single growing season and further crops need to be replanted
from seed. They also, like many other legumes, have this
amazing and fascinating symbiotic relationship with bacteria that live in
(09:30):
the soil around their roots. All right, here's a gig.
These bacteria need sugars produced by photosynthesis to live, but
the bacteria themselves cannot photosynthesize, so they form colonies, these
little nodules on the pea's roots. Meanwhile, the pea plants
need nitrogen to create chlorophyll and a bunch of other
(09:51):
important stuff like like various proteins, but they can't use
free ranging nitrogen in the air. They can't absorb it,
even though it's one of the most abundant elements in
our atmosphere. So in turn, the bacteria breathe in nitrogen
from the air and process that nitrogen into ammonia, which
plants can use. This process is called nitrogen fixation, and
(10:14):
peas and other lagomes, along with their little bacteria buddies,
fix so much nitrogen in the soil that there's a
surplus even after the peas growing season is over. They
leave the land better than they found it. Oh yeah,
So for this reason, lagomes are a popular crop to
plant in rotation with other crops that deplete the soil,
and gardeners can use peas like alongside other vegetables to
(10:36):
reduce or ideally eliminate the need to fertilize.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Way to go. Peas. Yeah, good for the earth. But
are they good for you?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
We're talking nutrition. Yes, yes. Peas have a decent amount
of protein, potassium, iron, calcium, amino acids, and complex carbs.
They are a low fat, low sodium food and they
show up in all kinds of things, some healthier than others.
Pasta soups, the notorious pea soup.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Oh I love a split pea soup.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Oh do you?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I don't think I've ever had one outside of once
when I was a kid, and The Exorcist is the
only thing I can envision. They show up frequently in
fried rice. There's peat flour and pea protein, just to
name a few.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
These days, there's also pea milk, oh yeah, and pea
yogurt on the market for folks who want their dairy
alternatives to be soy and nut free. Personally, I think
the pea yogurt tastes not good.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Oh I have not had it.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It's one of the very few foods that I've ever
been like, Nope, not this one.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Why what was it? What was the taste like? Oh,
it was just sort of well, the face you're making
is not good.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
It was sort of planty. It was sort of like
I was eating like a salad yogurt or like a.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
But like, oh, that's not that's what Google thinks of women,
right there, not a salad bluss yogurt, but not in
a nice way.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I was not a woman and laughing alone with salad yogurt?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Well who is?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Though?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
My salads are frequently hilarious good that makes me happy
most of the time.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I'm just kind of like, this is okay. I was joking. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Back to peas. Frozen peas, I will say, are just
as nutritious as fresh peas, and they are the most
common frozen vegetable in the United States.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Woo.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, Like, frozen peas are popular here to the point
that it's really hard to find fresh peas outside of
like farmer's markets or your own garden. Yes, Bonea Petite
ran a headline in twenty seventeen PSA, frozen peas are
actually better than fresh bold words, I know.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
The article is touting frozen peas convenience and quality and
ability to be cooked into dishes without being thawed first,
and to be fair, peas that are frozen like a
couple hours out of the field. When they are frozen
and they're they're sorted using this fun saltwater process, like
like a really specific gravity of salt water to make
(13:10):
sure that only the younger, more tender less starchy ones
make it into packaging. The tender ones float to the top,
the starchy ones sink in this specific saltwater solution. And
there's no such guarantee on peas that you shell yourself. Folks.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I'll have to tell my mom that, because if you
remember in our Frozen Food episode, every summer we buy
so many peas at the farmers market here in Atlanta,
the one off of seventy five South. For you, Laura
and everyone else. It's like, oh, it's a really big
farmer's market.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And we blanch them and we freeze them, and the
blanching hurts.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
It hurts because your hands are hot and then they're cold,
and then you do it again until we usually get
twenty like freezer size bags of peas and we put
them in this lock chest freezer. And I never see it,
you know, because I don't live at home anymore, so
I'm putting all this work into it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Why doesn't she give you some to take home?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I think I probably say no. I'm like, I'd never
want to see peas again, And then like a week later,
I'm over it and I'm thinking, wow, I really wish
I had some of those fresh peas. They do usually
turn out very well, very delicious.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I believe you.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Fresh. Crispy, well crunchy is how I like them.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah. On an industrial level, the sheer volume involved in
creating frozen peas within hours of the crops being picked
means that farmers have to stagger their plantings and their
pickings so that the freezing facility they're working with will
have the capacity to take their harvest when the peas
are ripe enough it's this whole like Labrinthian schedule. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I yeah, I would love to just to observe for
a little bit. Maybe that would put my struggles in perspective.
Ah my one day of struggle a year with peas.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I maintain there has to be some better way than
plunging your hands into hot peas and ice.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
My mom does it. It's like like a pro spoons.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Perhaps it probably is a really happy if you heard
of slotted spoons.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Slotted spoons, you say.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I do say.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Oh man, I'm gonna have to think about this.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Let's look at the numbers.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, let's look at the numbers. Somewhere around twelve to
seventeen point four million tons of peas are produced a year.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And I was I was trying to dig into this
number and I couldn't. I'm not sure if that's just
dried peas. I think it might be just dried peas.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
That's wild because because I.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Kept seeing like, like about twelve million tons of dried
peas every year, and I and there's there's hypothetically a
lot of fresh frozen peas.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
From what we've been discussing, it seems logical.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I think that there could be at least at anyway,
there's a lot of peas. There's a lot of peas,
and mortar intelligence for once failed me on the fresh
pea thing.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
They're busy trying to capture hobbits. We can't blame them
for that.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh it's not my fault. Someone named a company that.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Anyway, They're native to North Africa and Asia, and you
can still find wild peas in parts of Iran, Ethiopia
and Afghanistan. Canada was the largest producer in two thousand, though,
with China, Russia and France following its lead. And this
is another food that's eaten all over in all kinds
of different ways. In parts of Asia, dried peas are
(16:38):
a popular snack and addition to stir fries, that's a
pretty popular choice. Mushy peas in England, usually with your
your fish and chips.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Perhaps sure Note, however, that we are mostly not talking
about American Southern field peas like black eyed peas and
other black brown, cream red type peas, which are more
like beans and tend to take more earthy. A lot
of things are called peas. Yeah they really are, which
(17:06):
is a good segue to our history segment, but a
bad segue to an ad But first we're going to
take you on that ad break and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Thank you, so yes. Some of the history gets a
little murky because there are three main types of peas
that sometimes get confused for each other when we're talking
about history. Peas were one of the first domesticated plants
around eight thousand years ago, most likely in the Middle
East or South or Central Asia. They are one of
(17:49):
the eight founder crops or eight of the earliest domesticated
crops ever. From there, the peace soon appeared in China
and India. If that's not where it originated in the
first place, oh history. If we're talking pre domestication, some
evidence suggest the Neanderthals were eating peas forty six thousand
(18:11):
years ago. Might not be the same pea, though I
would say probably not the same pea, probably not. Other
evidence suggests that two types of peas were each domesticated
from a now extinct ancestor about eleven thousand years ago
in the Near East. The first known evidence of purposeful
pea cultivation is out of Syria nine three hundred years ago.
(18:35):
Those domesticating the pea did so selectively attempting to get
to a softer, shelled, wet season ready crop. Ancient Greeks, Egyptians,
Romans all enjoyed peas in their cuisine. The Epicios, that
really old cookbook recipe book had nine recipes that utilized
dried peas. Pea soup was a common to go item
(18:59):
sold by streetman. There's an ancient Athens, which I find
very curious. Indeed, one story goes that after Romans encountered it,
they named it piece them and that is where the
name comes from. But about that name, okay, So, originally
(19:20):
peas as in p ea s was the name for
a single P until the late seventeenth century when it
became known as the plural. So people seeing this peas
thought that that was the plural of oh.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It would say it out loud and say peace, and
then from there you get the singular p.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yes, So it was kind of a big misunderstanding.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Oh but people were saying pieces pieces, Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I know, let's go back to that. We can try
it perfect. But you can still see peas in the
rhyme peas poor it hot, which I don't know but
apparently is a lasting rhyme.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Peace porge, hot peace, porge, cold peace porge, and a
pot nine days old.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Look at you, Lauren font You really are always surprising
me with these rhymes about peas and other things. Peace
itself is possibly way way older, pre Indo European, maybe
even a g in Wow. I went on a hunt
to prove that Peace was related to Pisa, as in
(20:29):
Leaning Tower.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Of But no die oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
But Pisa is in its family tree. If like a
word family tree, I'm really bummed about it. But you
can't always get what you want.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
That's good, good life advice.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Any The Rolling Stones taught me that peas reached China
in seventh century CE, possibly called foreign legume piece at
this time maybe eaten fresh, but we're commonly dry dried.
Peas were a big time winter food. These peas were
more closely resembled to chickpeas, though Charlemagne had peas planted
(21:10):
in his gardens in eight hundred c e France, and
at the same time peas were a popular staple for peasants,
which I also went on a word hunt to see
if peasants and peas was related, and it's not, or
at least I didn't find any evidence that it was well.
They stored well and they kept for a long time,
so they were a good peasant food. And green peas
(21:33):
for lent were stored in the Barking Nunnery in twelfth
century London. A century later in France, fresh peas in
the pod was a popular street food item. They would
go on become a go to food for lant in
France and England.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Full of protein, you know meat.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
And I think for back when we had big family
dinners when I was younger on Easter, I believe we
had peace.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
It's a pretty popular spring fresh peas or a good
spring spring thing. They are a little bit of mint
and lemon.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Maybe. In sixteenth century Italy, gardeners cultivated a smaller tender
pee called Pizzelli Novelli. People loved these things. It was
the fashion, the fashion to eat unripe peas.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well by by unripe just like yeah, like immature, yeah,
green peas, because previously most of them had been eaten dried.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, and all the way up until seventeenth century, people
were sort of head over heels in love with these things.
A female friend of the Sun King, Louis the fourteenth
had this to say about fresh peas, which could be
wildly expensive. By the way, this subject of peas continues
to absorb all of us. Some ladies, even after having
(22:53):
supped at the royal table and well supped too, returning
to their homes at the risk of suffering from indigestion,
well again, eat peas before going to bed. It is
both a fashion and a madness. I mean, I mean
they're good. They are good.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I mean they're real good.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
They are. They have such an interesting texture thing going on.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, it's that pop and then the kind of creamy thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
It's one of my favorite dishes that I had in England.
Just again like peas, a little bit of lemon, little
bit of mint.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They were just so.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Green, they are very bright. They were just so I
felt like they tasted like the land and the air.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Oh now I'm gonna ash to get peas in every episode.
This happens every episode almost And I have a slight
aside because during this episode, the main reason I wanted
to do it was mostly because of genetics. Won't get
into that more later, but I did a lot of
these memories got jumbled around in my head. Did you
(23:58):
ever play. Well wait a minute, did you take what language?
Did you take as Spanish? Spanish? Okay, so you didn't
play this game. No, anyone who took French please write
in if you remember playing the game The Sun King
game where you were wandering around is court and trying
to please people like it was a computer game that
we would play in French class to learn French, and
(24:20):
I just totally forgot about it. I remember it being
incredibly frustrating. You could never figure out what they wanted,
which might have been the lesson.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Oh wow, and that's a little bit existential for what
like middle school? But yeah, sure, all.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Right, Well, speaking of fashion, that trend setter Catherine de
Medici introduced peas to France during the fifteen hundreds, and
the French named them tiny peas petipois. Due to the
popularity of peas in France, some towns were named after
recipes associated with their town that incorporated peas. Street vendors
(24:56):
in England advertised their hot gray peas with a called
bacon around this time as well. New varieties developed in
England around this time were known as garden peas and
English peace. Yeah. So that's some europe for you Europe
really digging into the stash of peas. We do have
(25:18):
some some New World stuff, but first we have one
last quick break forward from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. The colonists brought peas
(25:40):
with them to the New World. In quotes, they kept
well and were good for voyages, so kind of an
obvious choice to take with you. Settlers in Canada's New
France bought with them pea soup. If you remember at
the beginning we said top grower was Canada and France
was in the top five. I'll find that really kind
(26:02):
of there's interesting pe legacy. There is a p legacy,
and once again it's time to talk about someone else
with a legacy. Thomas Jefferson. He and his neighbors engaged
in a battle of the peas to see who could
grow them in their garden first, and Thomas Jefferson came
(26:23):
out in front.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Hopping back over to Europe.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
In the seventeen nineties, peas appeared in their first genetics study,
one led by Thomas Andrew Knight.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, and of course genetics weren't I mean, it's technically
what he was studying. He didn't know it at the time,
but he was working with different colored peas and observing
how cross fertilizing them could affect the color of future generations.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
France's eighteen hundred's Encyclopedia The Vegetable Garden included fifty pages
on different types of peas.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, and then along comes one Gregor Mendel in the
eighteen sixties. Mendel was an Austrian monk who realized that
some pea traits were more dominant than others. He carried
out a series of experiments that were the precursor to
the laws of genetic inheritance. While he died pretty much
as an unknown, his research came back into the scientific
(27:19):
zeitgeist in the nineteen hundreds and his contributions to genetics
was recognized.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, he's currently called like like the father of genetics
in some circles. And Mendel was using pea plants because
they're inexpensive, they're easy to grow and keep track of,
easier even than mice and honeybees, which is what he
started with. Part of why his work didn't catch on
during the time was that the prevailing theory was that
offspring are blend of their parents' traits. You know, like
(27:45):
if you've got a tall mom and a short dad,
you'll be of medium height. So therefore, what Mendel was saying,
you know that two tall parents can produce a short
offspring because the short trait may have been inherited. Just recessive, right.
It was unintuitive to people at the time, especially because
(28:06):
humans are more genetically complicated than pea plants. But no
one knew about genes yet, so it seemed really easily dismissed.
But yet his concepts of receiving a random assortment of
traits from each parent half of the traits that they
had each inherited from their parents would become the basis
of chromosomal heredity. In the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
The Humble Pee, the Humble Pee, the Campbell Company. Yes,
that Campbell Company chows peas as one of the first
things to can in eighteen seventy, as mentioned in our
Frozen Foods episode. They were also some of the first
vegetables to be frozen around the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And speaking of frozen peas, yes, there is this absolutely
bizarre and delightful moment and relatively recent history in which
famed actor writer and director Orson Welles absolutely pitched a
fit while attempting to record a few commercials, one being
for frozen peas. Another one was for cod fish fingers.
(29:10):
And I can't believe I forgot that when we were
doing our cod episode all anyway, this this fit he pitched.
This was This was after he reportedly made the recording
crew chase him all over Europe, like at least five
locations around Europe, a sort of revenge for them requesting
(29:30):
an audition.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
How dare they?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
This happened around nineteen seventy, so he was he was
already quite famous and really infamous also over being pretty persnickety,
and had taken to doing ads to help pay for
his pet projects. And I think we can roll a
little bit of this here because oh it's that's gold.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire where Missus Buckley lives.
Every July, peas grow there. Do you really mean that?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah? So you know i'd start half a second late.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Don't you think you really want to say July over
the snow? Isn't that the fun of it? It's if
you can make it almost when that shot disappears, it'll
make mine. I think it's so nice that that you
see a snow covered field and say, every July, peas
grow there. We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire where
Missus Buckley lives. Every July, peas grow there. We aren't
(30:25):
even in the fields you see. We're talking about him
growing and she's picked.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Him in July.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I don't understand you. Then, when must what must be
over for July? When we get out of that snowy field.
When I was out, we were onto a can of peas,
a big dish of peace. When I said in July,
that's just idiotic. If you'll forgive me, if I say so,
that's just stupid in July. I'd love to know how
you emphasize in and in July.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
We just actually played a little bit of it in
the studio here, Annie, Do you have any thoughts, feelings, reactions.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I love how his tone is very like even the
whole time it sounds reasonable, but what he's saying is
super unreasonable, super unreasonable. And I told Lauren, I don't
know what part we played, but I'm determined to say
you don't know what I'm up against in a like
straight voice.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, in regular conversation. Yeah, maybe by the end of
the day. I think you can. I have faith in
you can.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I think I can. Yeah, he calls from Orson.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
But yeah, if if that sounds familiar to anyone who
has never actually listened to that Orson Wells clip, but
who was perhaps watching Animaniacs or The Critic back in
the nineteen nineties, that's because Maurice LaMarsh, Who's wells impersonation
is super on point, and what I would say the
(31:53):
Brain character is based on. He did it pretty much
verbatim in Pinky and the Brain, except he like put
in family friendly phrasing for a few things, and he
also parodied it in The Critic. So yeah, you can.
You can look up the full audio under the names
Yes Always or or Frozen Peas if you just want
(32:18):
a real good giggle, I recommend it.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Now that you pointed out yes the Brain so much,
very much. Oh that's so scared me as a kid,
I wonder, and I could never put my finger on
why huh. It just really unsettled me.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It did, but in a way that I liked. Then again,
I'm like, I was a little bit older than you at.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
The time, so I might have Yeah, I should, I
should revisit it and see if I can figure out
what it was put me so on edge that show.
Maybe it was the Arson wild impression. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I don't know, but uh yeah, that's uh, that's the
story of Frozen peace and peace in general.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yes, and that brings us to the end of this
classic episode. We hope that you found it as delightful
as we found it bringing it back.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. Oh and if you have any
insider information or recipes about pea soup, let us know.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yes, please, I've been long thinking about this, but also
any p related recipes.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, I'll share.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Well, you can email all of that to us Hello
at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Or get in touch via social media. We are on
Blue Sky and Instagram at savor pod, and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducer Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(34:03):
we hope that lots of market things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com