Pease

Pease let us know.

Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, […]

It was fiercely cold, but I was a good deal warmed when the lad who drove me, talking of the crops of the country, spoke of “the peasen.” Thank God! I said to myself, there is still some smack of old England left in the land.

The due proportion for any land (except it be a very light blowing ſand) is two beans for one pea; by which means, they will be (without doubt) a ſtanding crop, as the beans will be (as it were, a rodding for the peaſe; in this caſe they are aſſiſtants to each other; for as the peaſe are kept ſtanding, and form (as it were) an arch over the top of the bean, the circulating air is admitted round them to aſſiſt in feeding the corning part thereof.

Experience ſhows that the common pea, whether white or grey, cannot be reared to perfection in any field which has not been either naturally or artificially impregnated with ſome calcareous matter.—Hence it happens, that peaſe are rarely cultivated univerſally as a field crop, unleſs in thoſe parts of the country where either lime, of marle, or chalk abound. But, on the ſeacoaſt, where ſhell-fiſh are often catched in abundance, we meet with a few exceptions to this general rule. It is pretty remarkable, that a ſoil which could hardly have made one pea come to perfection, although richly manured with dung,—if it ſhall have been once limed, ſhall be capable of producing abundant crops of peaſe ever afterwards, if duly prepared in other reſpects.

Take a quart of Green Pease, (keep out half a pint of the youngest, boil them separately, and put them in the Soup when it is finished,) put them on in boiling water, boil them tender, and then pour off the water, and set it by to make the Soup with; put the pease into a mortar, and pound them to a mash. Then put them in two quarts of the water you boiled the pease in, stir all well together, let it boil up for about five minutes, and then rub it through a hair sieve or tammis; if the pease are good, it will be as thick and fine a vegetable soup as need be sent to Table.

And yf this come to the rulers eares, we wyll pease him, and make you safe.