Recipe 10 A thick soup of peas

The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, Italy, 1570

Recipe # 188 book 2 page 234

To prepare a thick soup of fresh peas or broad beans in a meat broth.
   
     Get fresh peas in their season, which in Rome goes from the end of March throughout June - as is that also for fresh broad beans. Shell the peas and put them into an earthenware or copper pot with fat broth and pork jowl in slices. Boil them until they are almost cooked. Put in a handful of beaten anise and parsley and finish off cooking. If you want a thicker broth, grind up a little of the cooked peas, put that through a strainer and mix it among the whole peas, adding pepper and cinnamon. Serve them with the slices of pork jowl.
     With peas you can also cook stuffed goat-kid heads, their hair removed, and young cockrels, doves, young goslings and ducklings.
     You can also do peas in a different way: after they are cooked in broth they can be combined with eggs, cheese and spices.
     Beans can be done in all the above ways.


My redaction:

500 gm Peas, Broadbeans or Lima beans ( if fresh, this is post hulling weight)
1.5 liter Fat Meat broth
1.5 Tablespoon Anise seed
150 gm Parsely
300 gm Pork jowl

Simmer peas in fat meat broth with the pork jowl
When they are almost done add beaten anise and parsely chopped fine
Finish off cooking