• Welcome to the Receipts of the Blue & Gray. - The receipts you will find here are original Antebellum, and Civil War period receipts, as originally published between the years 1796 and 1880. One exception, is: Newspaper Clippings & Periodical Receipts are limited to a publishing period from 1858 to 1866.

    Some receipts from this era attempted to give medicinal advice. Many dangerous, and in some cases, deadly, "cures" were given, reflecting the primitive knowledge of that time period. Don't assume everything you read here is safe to try! Recipes and Receipts posted here are for Historic Research Purposes, enjoy them, learn from them, discuss them!

    ★ If you attempt to try one of these recipes / receipts, you do so at your own risk! ★

  • Welcome to CivilWarTalk, a forum about the American Civil War! - Join today! It's fast, simple, and FREE!

Vegetables Sugar Peas

sugar peas
1593464507014.png
(from The Kitchen Gardener's Instructor, by Thomas Bridgeman, 1844)

Ingredients:

sugar peas​
boiling water​

Instructions:

The Sugar Peas have no inner tough film, or skin, to the pods, like the common sorts; they should therefore be boiled without shelling, and served up the same as Kidney Beans.​


Source: Wikimedia Commons

I picked the last of my snow peas yesterday just before the storm blew through and it set me to wondering when they were introduced to the US. I never ate any kind of edible pod peas as a child and first saw them in Asian dishes. I assumed this was a twentieth century food for Americans, which we developed a taste for in eating at Chinese restaurants. But I was wrong! In doing a little digging, I found our Civil War ancestors grew and ate edible pod peas! In fact, the snow pea was introduced into Asian cuisine from Europe - not the other way around. However, our fore-parents didn't eat the same sugar or snow peas we eat today. The varieties grown then died out (mostly it seems through lack of interest). What we eat today in the US is mostly a variety of edible pod peas developed in the 1950s and introduced to wide cultivation only in the 1970s.

PeasBeansAd.png

Shepherdstown Register April 6, 1867

Edible pod peas were then, as now, known as sugar snap peas, or simply as sugar peas, or sometimes as "mangetout" peas from their French name (mange tout meaning 'eat all' in French). Multiple varieties were developed and newspapers listed which were best for home gardeners to try. I couldn't find any cookbooks that gave instructions on how they were cooked, but a gardening book had tips!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top