Pease Pudding and savaloy.

I'm making Pease Pudding :)

As per Mrs Isabella Beetons Book of Household Management.

Dead simple. Dried peas. Butter, an egg, salt and pepper. Water.

Now, Mrs Beeton's (12 March 1836 – 6 February 1865) original recipe needs a little adjustment. It feeds 7 or 8 people. I feed 3, plus whoever turns up. And it's meant as an accompiant to 'boiled beef or pork'.

Effectively, it's the original mushy peas. But I thought I'd stick as close to the original as possible.

The idea is, you soak dried peas in water overnight. Then you boil them in muslin from cold in rain water for a couple of hours, push them through a colander with the back of a wooden spoon, allow it to cool, then beat in butter, egg, salt and pepper.

Then you wrap it in a clean floured cloth, and boil it again for an hour. Serve hot.

First problem. Mrs Beeton obviously didn't have a gas or electricity bill :) So I'm pleased to do the maths to pare the amounts and therefore the cooking time down.

I realised that dried peas are actually more expensive than fresh or frozen peas. But I thought, what the heck....

Muslin cloth. Have you ever tried to get hold of it? At one time one could get it next to free from a local butcher - it was used to protect the meat when it was delivered there. Local Butcher? Whats that? Yeah, I know I could order it on the internet, but that defeats the object of keeping things simple.

More of that later.

A brief and rare flash of inspiration later, and The Bear lost the bottom half of a pair of unused stockings. Yup. Stockings. Shhhh. Don't want her to know, that I now know, (Gulp!) the secrets of her 'knicker drawer'.

Where was I? Oh, yeh. I feared my muslin substitute might melt, but no, seems ok. And the most delicious smell is drifting around the house...

The modern method is to cook dried peas with maybe half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Actually, all modern methods for cooking peas (Or Pease) pudding involves bicarb. It doesn't taste the same.

Now, nowadays, you buy mushy peas at at least a least a quid a pop for less than an ounce (25g) from some floppy chip shop. Or the same in a tin from a supermarket. After getting this going, I'm left with the wonder of the time that - predominantly ladies - spent by our ancestors feeding their families, for even the simplest meals.

I've not finished the Pease Pudding at the time of writing. The Dried Peas have been soaked overnight in water, and now their cooking in water (from cold) Then it has to cool, have egg, butter, salt and butter beaten in after sieving, and cooked again for another hour.

Amazing.