[Sca-cooks] pease please and beans

[Lonnie D. Harvel]

Terry Decker wrote:

> There are a number of varieties of fava beans.  Broad beans are 
> another name for favas.  I've never encountered the idea that the 
> broad bean is extinct, so I would assume it is erroneous until you can 
> verify the source.

I got that statement from this post in the florilegium beans-msg file:

--------------------------
Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 18:06:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Catherine deSteele <desteele at netcom.com>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Beans are period...sort of. Based on our research, there 
were a couple of period beans - fava
beans, which were known in Roman times and are still eaten in the
Meditteranean today. The other period bean was a now-extinct version of
the broad bean - you can substitute the Italian broad bean for it. Be
careful serving fava beans - some people have adverse reactions to it.
--------------------------

The modern references I have only refer to the Italian broad bean as 
being another name for the fava bean. According to Victory Seeds, most 
of the "old named varieties" are now available. They site as their 
reference, "A Discussion of 18th Century Beans" by Wesley Greene. From 
reading those notes, I gather that this may be a continued confusion. 
Pliny has his /Phaseoli, /which Bear has already referenced earleir 
(IIRC), and most of what I can find seems to point towards this being a 
variety of fava bean (/vicia faba) /that is no longer clutivated (I am 
not sure if that counts as extinct).

I am still trying to track down information on Peas. Input?

Aoghann