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 Vegetables in Medieval Europe
http://www.oldcook.com/en/medieval_vegetables.htm

Fruits and vegetables might be acknowledged edible without ever being set
on a dinner table. The chosen ones are chosen either for the sake of
showing off a social status or because of the dietary views of the times.
Muddy vegetables were left to the lower classes while the noble elite and
the upper classes marked a preference for the more aerial fruit. According
to Jean Louis Flandrin, recipes for vegetables accounted for only 9% in
cookbooks of the 14th and 15th century against 21% for books written since
the beginning of the 18th century. Also, more vegetable recipes are found
in books from Mediterranean parts, notably Italy and Catalonia. Should we
put it on the count of the survival of Roman traditions and Arabic
influence for the southern countries, and on the count of the influence of
German traditions for the northern ones ?
Consumption of edible plants also depends on their growing in a certain
place and at a certain time. Capitulary of Charlemagne de villis vel curtis
imperii, (of imperial lands and imperial courts), which was written around
AD 800, states a list of plants recommended for cultivation in chapter 70,
from which interesting observations can be gathered :

- There are vegetables well known today in the list such as cucumber,
chickpeas, celery, carrots, cabbage, leeks, peas, lettuce, garlic, onions,
shallots, as well as familiar aromatic herbs as mint, sage, cumin, anise,
parsley, savory, coriander.

- There are what we might call "forgotten" plants, either due to their
feeding or medicinal qualities having been overtaken by an ornamental
function, such as lilies, roses and gladioli, or because they are plants
nowadays considered wild, and the fact that they are edible has been
forgotten, as tansy, catmint, smyrnium olusatrum, orache, mallow.

- Missing in the list are vegetables considered basic today. These were
unknown in Europe because they were of transatlantic origin such as
potatoes, tomatoes, beans, courgette, or because, as aubergine, they
reached Europe only later, brought in by the Arabs from the East.

Vegetables in Medieval Europe :
.
* Artichokes
* Aubergine or Eggplant
* Cardoons
* Carrots
* Cabbage
* Medieval European gourds
* Melon
* Parsnip

Greens for porry :
* Swiss chard
* Spinach
* Leeks

- Top of page -
.Artichokes and cardoons

Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe : Cardoon Cardoon
Photo : Marie Josèphe Moncorgé

Artichoke : genus cynara scolymus
Cardoon : genus cynara cardunculus
Prickly thistles from the Mediterranean basin generated two edible plants
first gathered from the wild then cultivated, which were often confused in
the past, i.e. artichoke and cardoon. Both favour mild climates : artichoke
is mainly grown in Italy, Spain, southern France and Brittany whilst
cardoon is grown in the Rhône-Alps region (François Couplan considers
it a forgotten vegetable).

Pline the Elder wrote of the growing of "carduus" in Carthage and Cordoba,
and Columella cited "cynara" as grown in Andalusia, 1st century AD. Apicius
gave us 7 recipes for "sfondili" and 3 recipes for "cardui" (books III, XIX
and XX). Jacques André considers sfondili as cardoon hearts and cardui as
cardoons in the 1987 edition of his translation. But Michel Pitrat and
Claude Foury in History of vegetables, INRA, 2003, consider that a
sfondilus is an artichoke and a carduus is a cardoon. Mosaics from Tunisia
figure artichoke hearts, but a cardoon heart looks so much like that of an
artichoke, so ?

The word cynara was dropped early on in Latin while carduus which gave
cardoon and chard stayed in use throughout the Middle Ages. Swiss chard
though, with its large leaves, has nothing to do with cardoon and wasn’t
known before the 17th century.
Artichoke, on the other hand, was already established for sure in the 10th
century in Andalusia, under the name of harschaf. Artichoke reached Italy
and Navarre in the 15th century. It was called carcioffola in Italian and
cachofa in Spanish, carxofa in Catalan. It was grown in the Languedoc
region of southern France in the 16th century. Rabelais and Ronsard wrote
about artichokes in old French, spelling artichaulx or artichôs.
Artichokes were reputed to be aphrodisiac then.

Olivier de Serres wrote about the cultivation of cardoons and artichokes in
1600 in the Vivarais Mountains West of the Rhone River and cardoons are
still traditionally eaten for Christmas in Provence and in the Dauphine
region.

- An other vegetable | Top of page -
.Aubergine or Eggplant

Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Aubergines Tacuinum sanitatis
Aubergines
Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina (extract)
Codex Vindobonensis series nova 2644 der Oesterreichischen
Nationalbibliothek

Solanaceae family, genus Solanum
It is called vatin gana in Sanscrit, badindjan in Persian, al badin jan in
Arabic and Alberginia in Catalan … for the eggplant comes from India. The
oldest recipes for "moussaka" are found in Arabo-Persian cookery. It is the
Arabs that introduced aubergine to Spain when it was under the rule of
Islam. Many recipes for aubergine are found in Arabo-Persian and
Arabo-Andalusian books, notably the Baghdad Cookery Book (1226) and the
Anonymous Andalusian cookbook of the 13th century. There are 4 recipes for
alberginia in the Sent Sovi, 1324, 3 recipes by Robert de Nola in Naples,
beginning of the 15th century. The word aubergine does not appear in France
before 1750 though, as in fact the eggplant was only eaten in Spain, Greece
and southern Italy for several centuries. Aubergine was suspicious in the
northern parts, just as for the not yet known tomatoes, so long mistrusted
later on. Both plants are of the same family as the deadly nightshade, and
German botanist of the 16th century Leonhart Fuchs said that the word
aubergine alone should cause fright to those who care for their health.

Aubergines in the Sent Sovi are cooked au gratin with cheese :
Capitol CLI. Qui parla con se deuen coura albergines en casola
You take the aubergines and peel them and then cook them. And when they are
cooked, soak them in the cold water and then press them between 2 platters.
Take a terracotta dish and pour in the water with the spices, add some good
[cottage] cheese and mix it all together. And then when the contents of the
dish are well mixed, you take the aubergines and lay them in the dish and
bring it to the furnace. And let it cook in the furnace like a tart. If you
don’t want to bring it to the furnace, cook it with the embers on a
trivet, and put a lid on the dish with embers on top of it.

- An other vegetable | Top of page -
.Carrots

Apiaceae or Umbelliferae family – genus Daucus carota.
Wild carrots grow all over Europe, in parts of Asia and in northern Africa.
But Philippe-André de Vilmorin showed, around 1830 (see Jardin des Hommes
by J.B. de Vilmorin, 1991), that it was difficult to start over and breed a
garden carrot from a wild plant. Carrots kept to being long yellow and
ligneous roots for a long time. Apicius (Liber III – XXI – 1 to 3) gave
3 recipes for "carotae" : fried, with a garum fish sauce mixed with wine,
with vinaigrette, or boiled and cooked with a cumin sauce. Carrots
(carvitas) are found in the list of vegetables recommended for cultivation
by Charlemagne in the Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii (Of imperial
lands and imperial courts). Ibn al-Awwam, in the Kitab al-Filahah – his
book on Agriculture, 12th century – told of 2 kinds of carrots : the red
carrot, already known in Syria in the 4th century, and a larger but less
tasty variety of a green-yellow colour. Actually, it was a woody yellow or
red carrot that was known in the West until a carrot called the "long
orange" was invented in Holland in the 17th century and originated the
orange carrots we eat today. Not until the beginning of the 19th century
did the production of modern carrots start in France.

Carrots were often mixed-up with parsnips. Recipes by Apicius are entitled
"carotae sev pastinacae" (carrots or parsnips). A carrot is called
pastanaga in Catalan, which is close to the Spanish pastinaca for parsnip.
We find little carrots in the medieval recipes of the West, a bit more in
the Baghdad Cookery Book or in Arabo-Andalusian cookery. There are 2
recipes with carrots in the Liber de Coquina (V, 11 and 12) : the Lombard
compound and the Teutonic compound. In the Sent Sovi there is a recipe for
white carrots in almond milk (pastanagues blanques : qui parla con se ffa
pastanagua ab let de amelles, CXIII). And carrots again are mentioned in
the Ménagier de Paris, in the section dealing with Other small and
unnecessary things, where it is advised to cook them like turnip, and where
they are described as red roots, sold by the handful at the central market.

- An other vegetable | Top of page -
.Cabbage

Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Vilmorin's Cabbage Cabbage from
Milan
Album Vilmorin - lithographie 1862

Cruciferae Family, Brassica oleracea species.
Origins : a wild perennial plant some 60 cm to 1 m high, which is usually
found on rocky coasts and cliffs in Western Europe and around the
Mediterranean Sea, reaching to the Near East. Cabbage has been cultivated
for 5 or 6 thousand years. More than 400 varieties of cabbage have been
identified as issuing from this wild cabbage plant : round red or green
cabbage, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprout, broccoli and many regional
varieties in each of the European countries. The common round cabbage was
already grown during the reign of Julius Cesar. Cauliflower, which comes
from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, was called Syrian cabbage
in Arabian Andalusia of the 12th century. Olivier de Serres, in 1600, in
the Théâtre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs, speaks of
cauli-fiori, as the Italians say, still little found in France.
Romans already ate the same kind of broccoli as nowadays : Apicius gives
several recipes for cimas and coliclos (broccoli and cabbage sprouts).
Brussels sprout appeared in the 16th century, but really developed into the
present form, beginning only in the early 19th century.

In Hipocratism’s medieval classification, cabbage is a wet food. Poet of
the 10th century Macer Floridus said : Though indeed a common plant of our
kitchen gardens, cabbage keeps to having numerous healthy virtues.
According to Cato the Elder, Romans used cabbage as a medicine for more
than 600 years (related in Les Bonnes Herbes du Moyen Age by Laetitia
Bourgeois-Cornu).

Cabbage was such a common lower classes’ vegetable that it usually
wasn’t included in the recipes of medieval cookery for soup or "porée".
In the Ménagier de Paris (n°53), however, you can find a long
description of 5 different kinds of cabbage, when to harvest each of them
and how to prepare them : and you must know that the cabbages must be put
on the fire very early in the morning and let to cook a very long time,
longer than any other soup, with the fire hot and lively. They must soak in
beef fat and no other, whether they are round cabbages or any other kind,
apart from sprouting cabbages. You must also know that a beef or mutton fat
broth is quite adequate, but that that of pork fat is good only for leek.

Cabbage for sauerkraut

- An other vegetable | Top of page -
.Medieval European gourds

Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Gourd Tacuinum sanitatis Gourd
Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina (extract)
Codex Vindobonensis series nova 2644 der Österreichischen
Nationalbibliothek.
Family Cucurbitacea, species Cucurbita lagenaria vulgaris siceraria
Michel Chauvet – a researcher at INRA in Montpellier – says that you
must positively put out of your mind the anachronical belief that the
vegetables of today have always existed and are the same as those described
by the Elders.

Squash – Courge in French – is a perfect example of this anachronism :
How to grow squash is thoroughly explained the Ménagier de Paris
(gardening II, ii – 19), which also contains a recipe for squash (other
spiced soups, 63). A courge is a congorde in Taillevent and is eaten as a
soup. As for Maestro Martino he called squash zucche and made pies with it,
and the Sent Sovi has several recipes for carabaces

But … squash was unknown in Europe during the Middle Ages since it comes
from the American continent (as well as beans).
In fact, the Medieval European squash is not the pumpkin plant we know of
nowadays (Cucurbita pepo), but the sort of gourd that is sometimes called
calabash – not to mistake for the bottle gourd of Africa or for Calabaza,
yet another kind. According to Michel Chauvet, the young fruit of gourd
plants are as edible as zucchini – the Italian squash – also courgette.
Seeds from the Lagenaria plant can still be found in specialized seed
shops, by the way.

The gourd is known by the name of cucurbita since antiquity : A specific
chapter (LIII-IV) with 8 recipes for Cucurbitas is found in Apicius, and
the cucurbitas are on Charlemage’s list, in the Capitulare de villis vel
curtis imperii. From a linguistics point of view : cucurbita gave cohourge
then shortened into courde which, sometime after 1200, gave both gourd(e)
and courge. Both words were used for the same vegetable in the Middle Ages,
and squash is a word of American Indian origin.

- An other vegetable | Top of page -
.Melon

Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Melons Tacuinum sanitatis Sweet
melons
Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina (extract)
Codex Vindobonensis series nova 2644 der Oesterreichischen
Nationalbibliothek

Melon : Family Cucurbitacea, species Cucumis melo.
With origins in Asia or South Africa, present varieties of melon are
supposedly from the Caucasus or Armenia. Melon was already eaten in Ancient
Egypt, in Ancient Greece and by the Romans.

There are mix-ups in designations, sometimes, for the Cucumis melo species.
Michel Chauvet – a researcher at INRA in Montpellier – says that you
must positively put out of your mind the anachronical belief that the
vegetables of today have always existed and are the same as those described
by the Elders.

And as you can see, the picture above from the Tacuinum shows an oblong
shaped melon, much different from any kind grown today, witnessing to the
difficulties in identification met by researchers. There were also, in
antiquity and in the Middle Ages, confusions of designation between
cucumber, melon, watermelon and gourd.

Michel Chauvet explains that according to Pline (19,64-68), when the
"cucumbers had grown to a considerable size they were called pepones." The
Greek melopepôn derived from it and in turn the Latin melopepo, which
mean "melon-apple", of which Pline says they are a new variety resembling a
quince, growing to a round shape on the ground and of a golden colour
…The only recipe given by Apicius (recipe 85) is called "Pepones et
melons", which translator Jacques André rendered "watermelons and
melons". [… ] But these might well have been two different kinds of melon
– watermelon is citrullus lanatus not cucumis melo. In a note in the
margin Jacques André specifies that the recipe is probably for cooked
fruit ("compote") and adds that "we know that watermelon was cooked
(Dioclès de Caryste ap. Athénée, 68th)". We can therefore gather that
watermelon was probably not of the red and watery kind we eat nowadays. If
It were to have been a cultivar of the citrullus lanatus sort it would
rather have been the type of white fleshed watermelon called citre or
gigerine that is traditionally used to make jam in Provence, or one of a
kind that was picked immature (why not?). But I think it was just a large
tasteless ancestral species of melon.

In short, Apicius fixes Pepones and melons with pepper, pennyroyal, honey
or vin de paille, garum, vinegar. Silphium was sometimes added (III-VII).

Italian monks cultivated and improved melon during the Renaissance, in a
papal summer residence in Cantalupo. Cantaloupe was then introduced in
Avignon (Cavaillon melon is a sort of Cantaloupe).

La Quintinie grew melon in a greenhouse in Versailles. In the 17th century
in France, we found pompons – big tastless oblong fruits, and the sweet
round melons. There were 65 varieties of melon at the end of the 19th
century.

- An other vegetable | Top of page -
.Parsnip

Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Parsnips Tacuinum sanitatis Photo
: Jacques Bouchut

Apiaceae or Umbelliferae family – genus Pastinaca sativa. Apicius has a
same recipe for "carotae sev pastinacae" (carrots or parsnips)
The wild parsnip has a whitish and ligneous carrot-like root. It was
already eaten 2000 BC and nobody knows for sure yet, whether the ancient
texts refer to carrots or parsnips. Capitulary of Charlemagne however
clearly distinguishes carvitas from pastenacas. Two recipes for parnsnips
in pâté (escheroy) are found in the Ménagier de Paris (161 and 267).

A forgotten or depreciated vegetable in France, parsnip is still much eaten
in Great Britain and in the Iberic peninsula. The fleshy root of a parsnip
is thicker than that of a carrot. Parsnips are prepared the same way as
carrots.

Translator : Jean-Marc Bulit