Give pease a chance.
Pease pudding recipe, variations, and why we should save this local treasure
If you look online you’ll find many pease pudding recipes, ranging from American 🤔 to the Hairy Bikers, and everything in between. You’ll find varying ratios, herbs and vegetables included, and I do believe it can be fairly personalised to however you prefer it. But as a core base, try something like:
• 250g split yellow peas
• 25g butter
• 1 medium size onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 medium sized carrot, roughly chopped
• 1 litre of water
• 25g butter
• Salt & pepper
Optional additions
- 1 bay leaf
- Sprig of thyme or parsley
- 1 tb malt vinegar
Method
- Soak the peas — If you have the time and/or patience, cover the split peas in a bowl with water and leave to soak overnight. This can reduce the cooking time required. If you’re really diligent, change the water 1–2 times after a couple of hours.
- Wash off the peas — Even if you don’t soak the peas, it’ll be fine. It’s worth running them under a tap and pouring off the cloudy water.
- Soften the veg — Heat the butter in a fairly large saucepan over a medium heat, and add the onion and carrot when hot. Cook until the onion is translucent but does not have any colour, around ten minutes.
- Add the peas — Drain off the water from the split peas, and add them to the pan with the veg. Add a litre of water, the peas should be well covered.
- Add flavourings — At this point, add any optional herbs such as the bay leaf, a sprig of thyme some chopped parsley, whatever you like.
- Boil the peas — Bring to the boil, and if you can be bothered, skim off any of the foam that rises to the surface. Reduce to a medium heat, and cook for anywhere between 90 minutes and three hours. Top up the water if it gets low, the peas should always be submerged. If your peas are fresh, and you soaked them overnight, cooking time can be at the lower end of this scale. It’s cooked when you can take a split pea out and easily crush it between your fingers without it feeling grainy.
- Blitz to a preferred consistency — Remove from the heat, discard anything like the bay leaf. Add malt vinegar here if using, and blitz with a hand blender. It doesn’t need to be smooth — some residual texture is preferable. Season with salt and pepper to taste (white pepper seems more ‘right’), and stir through the remaining butter.
- Enjoy hot or cold — pease pudding also freezes well. If you prefer it looser, you can add some water or more butter here, but bear in mind it thickens significantly once cooled.
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Variations in recipe and method
The basic recipe above does the job, but it’s pretty versatile and you could add all manner of additional herbs and seasonings. Some ways to mix things up include:
- Using ham stock instead of water to cook the peas is very traditional, and adds salt, depth of flavour, a fattier mouthfeel, and smoke. Instead of stock, if you cook an actual ham, this makes the recipe a two-for-one, cooking two dishes that complement each other perfectly, and reusing a stock that is often wasted. I will post a separate recipe for cooking ham hock this way, which is the perfect accompaniment for pease pudding.
- Even if you don’t want to add a whole hock, adding a slice or two of smoked bacon will add a hit of additional flavour.
- If you’re cooking in ham stock, adding some cubed or shredded ham at the end is an option, making it even more substantial.
- Adding an egg once cooked is an old-school way of binding, which I feel unnecessary.
- Traditionally, the peas could be placed in a muslin cloth for boiling (hence pease ‘pudding’). Once cooked, this can then be reduced further to get to a slicing consistency.
- As well as the onion and carrot, some softened celery would add additional depth. Garlic works well too, as does adding cumin to further the earthy notes.
- The blending step is entirely optional. Once the peas are fully cooked, they will naturally break down and become mushy, so omitting this step is possible. Alternatively, you could blitz with butter or oil until super smooth and more sauce-like.
Everything you wanted to know about pease pudding
Pease pudding is a traditional British savoury dish made from split yellow peas, boiled until they break down into a dip of sorts. It is thick and creamy pale yellow, with a mild, earthy flavour. It’s as Newcastle as Ant & Dec, and sometimes known as ‘Geordie Hummus’. As a practical, working class grafter, it’s the Dan Burn of dips.
It isn’t hugely known outside of the NE, but here it has been a staple of Northern English cuisine for centuries, thought to date back to medieval times. It’s about making something easily from a few simple ingredients.
Best served of course, in a stottie, with ham (often cooked at the same time, imparting flavour on each other). It goes well with meats, particularly those which have been smoked, like pork, sausages, ham, gammon, and bacon. Roast veg also works well. The ham and pease pudding stottie is probably the quintessential Newcastle dish, and it just works — the bland creamy pease pudding contrasts the rich and salty ham well.
Historically and maybe to this day, it was eaten by the masses as an inexpensive and long-lasting hearty protein. When fresh meat was rare, and not just £3 in the supermarket, pease pudding gave the common man nutrition and padding to meals, as well as convenience in that it can be served for days and days after cooking. It’s a miners food — a reliable, affordable, filling meal that could be prepared at home. It reflects the economical, waste-nothing approach of traditional working-class cooking where one ingredient serves multiple meals.
The ‘pease’ in pease pudding comes from the peas that make up the dish, and used to be the singular for what we now call ‘pea’. Over time, ‘peas’ came to be understood as plural, leading to the creation of the new singular form ‘pea’. However, pease pudding has retained the archaic singular form in its name, preserving a linguistic connection to its medieval origins. As for pudding, as it used to be cooking in a cloth, it’s the ‘pudding’ like you would get in a steamed suet pudding.
It also, hilariously, has its own song (and accompanying dance).
Pease pudding hot, pease pudding cold, Pease pudding in the pot, nine days old. Some like it hot, some like it cold, Some like it in the pot, nine days old.
It does keep well, but nine days might be getting on for a stretch. But the point is, fridge cold spread on a sandwich, or hot and loose like a sauce, have it how you want.
If cooked without ham, it’s a great vegetarian or easily vegan dish, and a good source of protein and fibre as well as being naturally gluten-free. If you want real nutrition, you could also omit the fats, and as a legume-based food, it has a low glycemic index and provides sustained energy. For y’know, working on the shipyards, etc.
It’s similar to tons of dishes, notable Indian daal which is basically pease pudding with sexier spices. And split pea soup, or ärtsoppa in Sweden which is very similar, as is fava in Greece (confusingly, not made from fava beans). Also known as “pease porridge” or “pease pottage” it was even referenced in The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain where Dickens references people carrying slices of it in their pockets.
Retaining foods of cultural heritage and significance is really important, especially as the proportion of people who can actually even cook diminishes. And while other regions have several foods of cultural impact, there aren’t actually that many foods that are so closely associated with the history of Newcastle.
The future of pease pudding
Where does pease pudding go now? Greggs infamously axed the dish twice, in 2013, and 2020, which was probably where most would first encounter it. Those outside of the region now have limited opportunity to try the dish. Dickson’s still keeps the flag flying, being the biggest brand and the easiest place to buy pease pudding — selling tubs in retail as well as through Iceland. It still features it in the other local fave: the saveloy dip. But other than that, it seems pease pudding is a niche dish you might see somewhere like Blackfriars as a garnish, or in higher-end restaurants as ‘something unusual’.
It’s a shame, as it’s a simple, humble dish that has lasting importance in the region. In an era where money is tight, and ultra processed foods rule the roost, it’s a nourishing and thrifty dish, that’s been around since medieval times and it’d be a real shame for it to lose cultural significance. Maybe it’ll have its hummus moment one day. I hope the ham & pease stottie remains a classic, and if you haven’t yet tried it, give it a whirl.
