SC - Peas, Peas, Beautiful Peas...

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

I happily stand corrected!!!

- --Anne-Marie, who is always looking for altnerante beans to make benes
yfryd with....

At 08:28 AM 1/30/01 -0600, you wrote:
>Blackeyed peas are Vigna unguiculata and are of Old World origin (probably
>India with variants in China and Africa).  Catjangs, cowpeas, and yard-long
>beans are all variants.  The Italians lump them together with the New World
>Phaseolus, but they apparently were known and eaten (as food of the poor) in
>Classical Antiquity (see Pliny). 
>
>If you look at the language, peas, lentils, favas and grabanzos are
>liguistically separate from phaseolus.  The confusion comes because the
>Vigna and the New World beans were lumped together as fagiola (or fasioli)
>and then the term Phaseolus was taken taxonomically for the New World beans.
>Because the Vigna are tied linguistically to the modern variant of
>phaseolus, they are probably the phaseolus of the Romans.    
>
>I refer you to Annibale Carracci's The Bean Eater for visual evidence of
>black-eyed peas being eaten in period.
>
>While Platina gives some recipes specifically for phaseolus (and remembering
>he predates Columbus and most taxonomic efforts), it is very likely that
>black-eyed peas would not be found much outside of peasant dining.
>
>Bear 
>
>> beware...not all called "pea" is really a pea...."blackeyed peas", for
>> example are really beans and so new world (and not 
>> appropriate for medieval
>> re-enactors).
>> 
>> You want stuff out of the pea/lentil/fava/garbanzo family, 
>> nitrogen fixers,
>> vetch leaves, etc
>> not the fasiolis ie bean/string bean/lima bean/scarlet runner 
>> bean/etc family.
>> 
>> not sure about the other varieties...you could tell by the 
>> latin name, I bet!
>> 
>> --AM
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