| It's not Rocket Sallet... until it is. | | | | century. |
| Vegetables and organ meats shared a split personality | | | | Lettuce is a salad herb, too, just not necessarily the |
| for the Pilgrims in the 17th century. On the one hand, | | | | first thing you think of for salad. It seems to travel back |
| they're dainty morsels, served with verve and flair on | | | | and forth between the dainty and the common. Just |
| the noblest of tables; on the other hand, they're the bits | | | | like now. Think of the difference between iceberg |
| that are left to serve the poorest of the poor. Let's | | | | lettuce and baby Bibb. There are other leafy greens |
| save offal for another day - there's a great haggis | | | | betwixt and between dainty and common. Arugula, |
| controversy bubbling up in food history circles...I'll keep | | | | known as rocket to 17th century Englishmen (and |
| you posted. But back to vegetables. | | | | hence, rocket salad), spinach, endive, beets... If the |
| I'm sure you all remember back to the third grade | | | | technology is working for me today, (Buddy, I'm |
| when you learned that the natural world is divided into | | | | counting on you for backup!) there is a lovely image of |
| animal, mineral and vegetable. And that's exactly what | | | | a second year beet. But, wait a minute, aren't beets |
| a vegetable was in the 17th century - that whole large | | | | red things that grow underground - this are large and |
| category of trees and vines and shrubs and grains | | | | green and waving in the breeze - and what's with this |
| and shrubs and reeds and cetera - not just the plants | | | | second year business? |
| you grow for your plate (like at the first Thanksgiving). | | | | Side-bar on beets: what we now call Swiss chard is |
| If you grow it in your garden, particularly your kitchen | | | | the beet of the 17th. What we now call beets is the |
| garden, then it's an herb. Cabbage is an herb. Carrot is | | | | beet root, or Red Roman beetroot of the 17th century. |
| an herb. Rosemary and rue are herbs. Parsley, sage, | | | | How did it become Swiss? I haven't a clue, but it |
| thyme - herbs. Turnip, asparagus, skirret - also herbs. | | | | doesn't happen until the 19th century. As for the chard |
| There are sun-categories of herbs, often overlapping: | | | | part - that comes from the rib in the center of the leaf, |
| pot herbs, sweet herbs, physic herbs, herbs for | | | | which harkens back to the card in the cardoon....Why |
| strewing, and of course, salad herbs. | | | | hasn't anyone written the Secret Life of Beets? |
| The Pilgrim's salads were made of herbs. Like so | | | | Perhaps in my copious free time....Beets form seed in |
| much else in the 17th century, there is a hierarchy of | | | | their second year, so you have to hold a few through |
| herbs, too. Cabbages, kales and coleworts (we know | | | | the winter to get more beet seeds. |
| then as collards) - common, definitely food of the poor. | | | | Salads are usually boiled. Eating raw plants was |
| Easy to grow, easy to keep, good for a long time in | | | | sometimes fashionable, was sometimes disdained. |
| the garden, keep well after they harvested. Cabbages | | | | Generally, cooking food made it more artificial (meaning |
| are also considered to be 'windy' - Nickolas Culpepper | | | | very artfully), which wass a good thing for the Pilgrims |
| compares them to bagpipes and bellows...not dainty, | | | | in the 17th century because then it is improved by the |
| even then! Garlic is considered to be 'poor man's | | | | hand of man. Cooked food was also supposed to |
| treacle' - good for whatever ails the poor. It's also | | | | better for your digestion. |
| generally assumed that the poorer sorts are doing | | | | So if boiled green beans or spinach or endive or Swiss |
| more physical labor, and therefore have more heat, | | | | chard have ever turned up on your table, then you |
| hotter digestion, or decoction of their food. (That's | | | | have been making boiled salads unawares. In the 17th |
| Doctrine of Humours in 25 words or less!) | | | | century Dutch cookbook The Sensible Cook there are |
| Asparagus, artichokes, broom buds, sapphire, purslane | | | | recipes for boiled salads, and then there are recipes |
| (not the nasty garden weed - proper garden purslane), | | | | for various herbs, like boiled cabbage and boiled |
| cowslips, gillyflowers are all dainties. Beancods - plain | | | | cauliflower that are not called salads, just a dish of.... |
| ole green beans to us now - dainty. Potatoes are a | | | | So much for theory. Soon - Thanksgiving recipes. |
| dainty - that's gonna change, but not until the 18th | | | | |