SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF CULINARY VEGETABLES. 



stretch out into a round shape, others 

 extend in breadth, and are very full of 

 fleshy brawns, and some possess heads 

 twelve inches thick." He also remarks, 

 that all the varieties eat sweeter from 

 being touched with the frost, an o^pinion 

 prevalent at the present day. In the 

 Roman culture we find that the sprouts 

 were plailted as well as the young plants — 

 a disemery made a few years since, arid 

 recorded in one of our most costly horti- 

 cultural works, and described nearly as 

 Columella did many hundred years 

 ago. 



Fennel was cultivated largely by the 

 Romans as a garden herb, and so much 

 used in the kitchen that there were few 

 meats seasoned or vinegar sauces served up 

 without it. "A good housewife," says 

 Pliny, " will go into her herb -garden 

 instead of a spice-shop for her season- 

 ings, and thus preserve the health of 

 her family by saving her purse." 



From an anecdote related by Herodo- 

 tus, in connection with the murder of 

 Smerdis by his brother Carnbyses, it is 

 quite evident that lettuces were served at 

 the royal tables of the Persian kings five 

 hundred and fifty years before Christ. 

 The ancient Romans, however, appear to 

 have known only one sort, which Pliny 

 describes as a black variety. Suspicion 

 prevailed of their having a deleterious 

 effect; but, after Antonius Musa cured the 

 Emperor Augustus Csesar by means of 

 this plant, that suspicion vanished, and, 

 as Pliny says, men began to devise means 

 of growing them at all seasons of the 

 year. The variety of lettuce cultivated 

 by the Greeks is stated to have grown 

 " high and large." Those employed by 

 the Romans in the days of Pliny were 

 the purple sort, with a large root, the 

 Egyptian, Cilician, Cappadocian, &c. 

 Great pains, he says, were taken t6 make 

 them cabbage, and they were earthed up 

 with sea-sand to blanch them and give 

 them heart. The white lettuce was no- 

 ticed as being the least hardy even in 

 that mild climate. 



Salads were much esteemed amongst the 

 ancients, and even poets sang their praises. 

 Ovid, in his " Philemon and Baucis," 

 says— 



" A garden salad was the third supply, 

 Gf endive, radishes, and succory." 

 VOL. II. 



And Columella also thus notices the 

 endive — 



"And endives, which the blunted palate please." 



The endive is said by modern botanists 

 to be a native of the East Indies. This 

 Would lead us to believe them little ac- 

 quainted with European historical authors; 

 for, besides Ovid and Columella, Pliiiy 

 also mentions endive in the eighth chapter 

 of his twentieth book. Horace alludes to 

 the plant under the name of cicorea, in 

 lib. i. ode 31; Virgil makes special men- 

 tion of the marigold in the second eclogue 

 of his " Bucolics;" and Catullus thus no- 

 tices the marjoram, in the " Epithala- 

 mium of Julia and Manlius " — 



" Bind your brows with the sweet-smelling mar- 

 joram." 



Mint is equally honoured by Ovid's 

 notice of it, from which we learn that the 

 humbler classes used to perfume their 

 tables by rubbing the plant upon them 

 before serving their supper ; and so 

 highly was mint thought of at Rome, 

 that Pliny says, " you will not see a hus- 

 bandman's board in the country, but all 

 the meats, from one end to the other, are 

 seasoned with mint." The humble creep- 

 ing Penny Royal formed the subject of a 

 consultation of physicians held in Pliny's 

 chamber, the result of which was, that 

 they agreed that a chaplet of this plant 

 was, without comparison, far better for 

 giddiness and swimming of the head than 

 one of roses. We have met with no ac- 

 count of the cultivation of the mushroom 

 in the authors of antiquity, but that they 

 were in extensive use is quite evident, had 

 we no better authority than the circum- 

 stance of one of them, the Agaricus Cassar- 

 eus having been made the vehicle of poison 

 by Agrippina for her husband, Tiberius 

 Claudius. That they were as highly prized 

 amongst the epicures of ancient Rome as 

 they are by those of modern London, is 

 evident from what Pliny says of them, in 

 his 6th book, chap. 8, " the last device of 

 our epicures to sharpen their appetites, 

 and tempt them to eat inordinately, is the 

 cooking of mushrooms ;" and, in the 23d 

 chap, of his 22d book, he adds, " there are 

 some dainty wantons of such fine taste, 

 and who study their appetite to such ex- 

 cess, that they dress mushrooms with their 

 own hands, that they may feed on the 



B 



