Abstract
Dutch Admiral is an alternate name for the Marrowfat pea and is mentioned in Philip Miller's The Gardeners Dictionary from 1731 and slightly later in John Randolph's A Treatise on Gardening, composed in 1765 and published in Richmond, Virginia, in 1793. The Horsell farmer's inventory of 1689 is then our earliet attestation of the term. As the Anglo-Dutch wars, beginning in 1652, would have been of recent memory, one may speculate that the term is an allusion (via Dutch mevrouw ‘mistress’?; cf. marrow-) to one of the celebrated Dutch fleet commanders of the seventeenth century. However, none of the better known names – the Tromps, father and son, de Gruyter, de Witt, deWinter, Evertsen, van Galen, van Ghent, Blinck, Cruys (born in Norway as Creutz) – suggests a possible pun. Rouncival was the name of another variety of pea and, since sweet pea types were repeatedly introduced to Britain from Holland, our term may have originated as ‘Dutch Rouncivals’.
Published Version
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