The dish is made from the black pea, an older variety of the plain pea (Pisum Sativum). Also known as maple pea, carlin pea, parched pea, blackening flat pea, brown pea, grey pea, field pea, brown badgers and black bitter vetch.
Black peas form a traditional dish with variations across the north of England. In the north west, the dried peas are long soaked overnight then boiled. They are traditionally eaten from a cup with salt and vinegar.
In the north east they are more likely to be simmered to produce a type of mushy pea.
In some places they were associated with the Sunday before Palm Sunday, known as 'Carlin' Sunday. In Lancashire they were traditionally eaten around bonfire/Halloween night.
They are also used in pigeon food and make a good carp bait.
A Brief History of the Pea
Wild pea seeds have been found in archaeological excavations dating to 10,000BC. Peas were one of the earliest food crops to be cultivated, probably about 5000 to 6000BC somewhere in central Eurasia. By the 13th century dried peas, easily stored throughout the winter months, had become a staple food of the European peasant.
New cultivars were developed and the garden pea which we would recognise today became popular in the 16th century, especially in France and England where it became a familiar Lenten dish. By the 1800s there were many varieties: an encyclopaedia of cultivated vegetable plants, published in France in the 1800s, devoted 50 pages to the varieties of cultivated peas. More than 1,000 varieties of peas are in existence today.
In the 1860's, Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, studied how pea plants reproduce and his work founded the science of genetics.
