142 A GARDEN OF HERBS 



Field and the Good Wife's Garden, where they are legiti- 

 mately born and without forcing Nature." 



The number and variety of the ingredients in the old 

 salad would astonish most modern cooks. Even in the 

 seventeenth century, Evelyn deplored how far we were 

 behind the French and Italians, " who gather anything 

 almost that is tender to the very tops of Nettles, so as every 

 Hedge affords a sallet (not unagreeable), and seasoned with 

 Vinegar Salt and Oil, which gives it both the Relish and Name 

 of Salad Ensalada as with us of Sallet from the sapidity 

 which renders, not Plants and Herbs alone, but men them- 

 selves pleasant and agreeable." And why should we not 

 revive these excellent old salads ? Why do not our modern 

 cooks decorate our salads with strewings of rose petals, violets, 

 primroses, gillyflowers, cowslips, and the flowers of elder, 

 orange, rosemary, red sage, angelica, nasturtium, wild thyme, 

 bugloss and marigold. All these flowers, and many others, 

 are full of virtue and most wholesome. That they might 

 not be wanting in winter salads many of them were preserved 

 in vinegar or candied, and sometimes instead of having the 

 flowers whole they were chopped and mingled together. 

 Besides the flowers, which were the most ornamental part, 

 " the furniture, and materials," consisted of an astonishing 

 number of roots, stalks, leaves and buds, which we never 

 think of using. We know it was the opinion of James II's 

 head gardener that there should be at least thirty-five ingre- 

 dients in an ordinary salad. He would have had a poor 

 opinion of the modern gardener's contribution to the salad 

 bowl. Numbers of roots were included, such as the elecam- 

 pane, daisy, fennel, angelica, rampion, parsnip, carrot, and 

 they were frequently blanched or candied, or simply boiled 

 and added when cold or pickled. Then for the green there 

 were sowthistle leaves, to which Evelyn tells us the Ambas- 

 sador from Morocco and his Retinue were so partial, young 

 spinach and wild succory leaves, tansy (" very sparingly 

 because of its domineering relish and much fitter for the 

 pan, being qualified with the juices of other ' fresh herbs ' "), 

 young primrose and violet leaves, tarragon and rocket leaves, 



