name: Common Pea

flavor_db_name_variants: common pea

source: foodb

status: draft

food_db_id: Common pea

id: 141

name_scientific: Pisum sativum

description: The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the pod fruit Pisum sativum. Each pod contains several peas. Peapods are botanically a fruit, since they contain seeds developed from the ovary of a (pea) flower. However, peas are considered to be a vegetable in cooking. The name is also used to describe other edible seeds from the Fabaceae such as the pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), the cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), and the seeds from several species of Lathyrus. P. sativum is an annual plant, with a life cycle of one year. It is a cool season crop grown in many parts of the world; planting can take place from winter to early summer depending on location. The average pea weighs between 0.1 and 0.36 grams. The immature peas (and in snow peas the tender pod as well) are used as a vegetable, fresh, frozen or canned; varieties of the species typically called field peas are grown to produce dry peas like the split pea shelled from the matured pod. These are the basis of pease porridge and pea soup, staples of medieval cuisine; in Europe, consuming fresh immature green peas was an innovation of Early Modern cuisine. The wild pea is restricted to the Mediterranean basin and the Near East. The earliest archaeological finds of peas date from the neolithic era of current Syria, Turkey and Jordan. In Egypt, early finds date from ca. 4800–4400 BC in the Nile delta area, and from ca. 3800–3600 BC in Upper Egypt. The pea was also present in Georgia in the 5th millennium BC. Farther east, the finds are younger. Peas were present in Afghanistan ca. 2000 BC, in Harappa, Pakistan, and in northwest India in 2250–1750 BC. In the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, this pulse crop appears in the Gangetic basin and southern India.

itis_id: 26867

wikipedia_id: Pea

picture_file_name: 141.jpg

picture_content_type: image/jpeg

picture_file_size: 37409

picture_updated_at: 2012-04-20T09:29:56.000Z

legacy_id: 150

food_group: Pulses

food_subgroup: Peas

food_type: Type 1

created_at: 2011-02-09T00:37:22.000Z

updated_at: 2019-05-14T18:04:17.000Z

creator_id: null

updater_id: null

export_to_afcdb: true

category: specific

ncbi_taxonomy_id: 3888

export_to_foodb: true

public_id: FOOD00141