It makes the peas taste funny

[shewhomust]

My current bedtime reading is Alice Thomas Ellis' Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring: A Gallimaufry, a ramble thtough the author's collection of historic cookbooks and household guides. She is both entertaining and irritating - this passage about pea soup is not so much typical as exemplary:

Speaking of which, before the Clean Air Act, London fogs were known as pea-soupers, indicating, I believe, that this dish was once more widely known and consumed than it is now. I
make it from dried peas, or the mushy sort which you can buy frozen, and add a great deal of chopped mint and a large spoonful of honey: it is my favourite soup but no one else likes it. 1n
Victorian times both the air pollution and pea soup were known as London Particulars. I was living in Hampstead when the last fog fell on London: I had been to the corner shop and had to find my way home by feeling along the walls and railings and going up front steps until I got to the right house. Truly, you could not see your hand in front of your nose. It was oddly thrilling and although a lot of people died from inhaling fog, it added a touch of drama and mystery to the prosaic London scene.

"Now" is 2004.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I still have my gran's recipe for pea soup and still make it, especially at this time of year.

Bowl of pea soup, lump of home made bread; perfect when the temperature's down below zero!

[shewhomust]

Do you add honey?

[cmcmck]

She didn't, so I don't.

Mint isn't a thing either- I add sage and thyme.

[shewhomust]

I sometimes cook fresh peas with mint - but sage and thyme sounds better for soup ...

[nineweaving]

The only time I ever made pea soup was when a friend gave me a huge ham bone after a party, and I improvised. Mint goes with new peas, sage and thyme with dried.

Nine

[shewhomust]

Alice Thomas Ellis complains at the insistence of past writers that meat is an essential component of soup - but I agree with you that there is no spur to soupmaking like a hambone. I'm more likely to make lentil than pea, though ...

[poliphilo]

I remember navigating London peasoupers in the 50s and 60s. They were quite something. Thomas Ellis doesn't exaggerate.

[shewhomust]

London's air and London's river are both much cleaner now than they were in those days!