[Sca-cooks] TI Article on Peas
Terry Decker
t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net
Fri Jul 20 12:43:13 PDT 2007
We finally got our TI and I've looked over the article. Not bad, but not
really accurate.
The garden pea, which the author was discussing is Pisum sativum ssp.
sativum, but the peas that were common in Northern Europe prior to the 16th
Century were field peas, P. sativum var. arvense. Field peas are better
suited to drying than to being eaten fresh, which may be why fresh pea
recipes are few and far between.
The "smaller Italian pea" presumably introduced by Catherine de Medici is
actually the garden pea and the reason it was smaller (as in piselli novelli
(?) and petit pois) is because the pods that are eaten fresh are picked
prior to maturity. However, the fad of eating fresh, immature peas is more
of an artifact of the 17th Century.
My biggest beef with the Apocrypha of Catherine is that the fabulous Italian
cooks in her train made all these changes to French cuisine were most like
just that, a fable. Catherine's branch of the Medici had taken some hard
financial hits from civil war before her Uncle, the Pope, pulled her from a
convent to cement a political alliance with the French. The Pope was paying
the bills, so any great Italian chefs that arrived in France probably worked
for the Pope and likely went home with him. I sometimes think the tale of
Catherine's cooks is a Victorian swipe at the French, but I haven't chased
the sources.
>From her marriage in 1533 until 1560, was largely ignored at the French
court. On the death of her husband, she became Regent for her son and could
no longer be ignored. The changes she made in French society from 1560 to
her death in 1589 are far more interesting than the fabulous cooks.
Bear
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