Let Them Eat Peas

Early peas, just up.

A cool mist hangs in the greenhouse; the ground is caked and cold. But the sun is rising earlier each day, and the chill morning air smells of dirt. The peas rattle in their packet, their apparent dormancy a ruse. Among the earliest seeds to go in the ground, I line peas out in rows even while snow lingers outside the greenhouse. They will sprout at the earliest opportunity, needing only a bit of spring warmth to fuel their emergence from the moist soil.

Despite my spring-planting homage to peas,

One of the first pea flowers.

they are a relatively recent addition to my diet. Conspicuously absent from my childhood plate, peas did not feature in the frozen vegetable medley delivered by the Schwann truck in rural Montana. I encountered them in college as overcooked additions to tuna casserole in the dining hall, or as lurid green occupants of the token salad bar. It was not until I ventured into farmers’ markets as an adult, attempting to expand my vegetable horizons and feed my children something other than grocery store bags of lathed baby carrots, that I first tasted truly fresh peas. I bought some at a market stall, split open a pod, and tossed them in my mouth while wandering. The taste brought me to a standstill right there in the market aisle, and I uttered an inadvertent exclamation of pleasure at their bursting sweetness. I was hooked, lured into the world of pea pods, early peas, big peas, sugar peas, snap peas, and

flowering peas. The term mangetout, the French word for peas, translates as “eat all,” an accurate summary of my pea perspective. How had I survived so many years without this gem of the food world? I’m still making up for that early deprivation with copious pea consumption.

Humans first cultivated peas in the Fertile Crescent at least 8,500 years ago. Peas claimed wide consumption in China 2,200 years ago, and they became integral to the Japanese culinary tradition no later than 600 CE.[i] Peas were a popular crop for good reason – with a high protein content and indefinite storage life, dried peas could be harvested and stashed away as culinary insurance against starvation. When Dutch growers popularized uncooked fresh peas in the 1600s, the pea went from stolidly reliable to all the rage in Europe, and the regulars at the French court of the Sun King demanded “nothing but peas!”[ii] Over time, as both traditional staple and culinary trend, the pea became the subject of stories like “The Princess and the Pea” and seasonal traditions, including the warning that “…anyone who eats peas during the twelve days of Christmas will get boils on the arse or will become hard of hearing…”[iii] Neither outcome sounds pleasant, so I restrain my pea habit around the holidays, just in case.

An abundance of pea flowers.

However humans ingested them – dried for long-term storage or as part of the fresh pea craze – peas offered hearty nutrition. They also delivered a surprising side benefit. While peas have long been a symbol of fertility, they actually contain a substance that hampers the production of reproductive hormones. Thus, cultures that consumed an abundance of peas benefitted from a reduced rate of conception and had at their disposal a means of managing fertility. As botanist Wolf Storl explains, peas “practice birth control on their natural predators….At times when the climate is too cold or too dry for optimal growth, the plants produce these hormones in abundance so as to reduce the chance of being consumed out of existence. But during optimal conditions, when they themselves are abundant, they produce such small amounts of these fertility-reducing hormones that they have little or no influence on their predators.”[iv]

The first pea pods. Mangetout!

 As we savor the flavor of the pea in multitudinous culinary preparations, we can also appreciate its contributions to modern science in work like that of Gregor Mendel, who used peas for his genetic research in the mid1800s. The pea is interfertile, meaning that it crosses easily without human intervention. Through pollination among and between differing varieties growing in close proximity, the pea continues to evolve, adapting to changing conditions through a gradual reshuffling of genes.

A nitrogen fixer, peas dispense abundance in their root systems, enhancing soil fertility and offering nutrition to humans, plants, and mycorrhizae alike. In the kitchen, peas can be added as a textural enhancement to soup or stew or formed into fried and tasty pea fritters. Thus, the pea became a “friend of humanity,” cohabiting with humans through the ages and providing sustenance, culinary variety, and even contraception.[v]

Of course I feel jubilation at the spring planting of the peas. How could I not? With so much to enjoy, with rich flavors to savor, the pea is a universally good thing…at least until one overindulges to the point of “boils on the arse.”

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[i] Adam Alexander, The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022.

[ii] Wolf D. Storl, A Curious History of Vegetables: Aphrodisiacal and Healing Properties, Folk Tales, Garden Tips, and Recipes, North Atlantic Books, 2016, p. 194.

[iii] Ibid, p. 196.

[iv] Ibid, p. 200. For further plant-related reading, Zoë Schlanger’s robustly researched The Light Eaters (2024) makes the case for revising widespread assumptions about the passivity of plants and provides examples supporting interpretations of plant agency.

[v] Ibid, p. 193.