All nations have sown vegetables, and judged them worthy of their particular attention; sometimes they have even confounded many of these plants with the cereals, because they were converted into flour and bread,[VII_1] especially in time of famine.[VII_2]

After the Deluge, when God made a covenant with Noah he said, with respect to the food of man:—“Even as the green herb have I given you all things;[VII_3]” and, subsequently to that epoch, the holy writers frequently demonstrate, in their simple and interesting style, the various uses which the Hebrews made of vegetables. Esau, pressed by hunger, sold his birth-right to Jacob for a dish of lentils.[VII_4]

Among the presents which David received from Shobi, were beans, lentils, and parched pulse.[VII_5]

The four Hebrew children were fed with vegetables, at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.[VII_6] It is sufficient, we think, to indicate these passages, without uselessly increasing the number.

The heroes of Homer, those men covered with iron and brass, whose terrible blows dealt death and desolation, reposed after their exploits, partaking of a dish of beans or a plate of peas.[VII_7] Happy simplicity of the Homeric ages! Patrocles peeled onions! Achilles washed cabbages! and the wise Ulysses roasted, with his own hands, a sirloin of beef!

One day the son of Thetis received under his tent a deputation sent by the Greeks, to entreat him to be friends with Agamemnon. The young hero, who could only be accused of a little pride and passion, invited these worthy personages to dinner, and, with the assistance of his friend, gave them a magnificent banquet, in which vegetables occupied a most conspicuous place.[VII_8]

Sixteen Greek authors have devoted their vigils to profound researches concerning the qualities of these useful plants; their works have not been transmitted to us, but their names are to be found inscribed in the gastronomic treasure which AthenÆus—that grammarian, philosopher, and epicurean—has bequeathed to the meditations of posterity.[VII_9]

But it is principally with the Romans that this interesting branch of the magiric art flourished. They have told us that this great family of herbs took the name of vegetables (legumina), because they were chosen and picked by the hand;[VII_10] and their most celebrated horticulturists have prided themselves on the preparation of the ground to which they were confided, on the attention which they claimed, and on the Hygeian virtues which experience attributed to them. Heathen theology, too, consecrated several of them to the solemnities of their religion, and some nations even considered them worthy of their homage and the fumes of incense.[VII_11]

Virgil himself seems to regret his inability to sing of gardens and vegetables. Perhaps a rapid sketch of what the great poet says on this subject, may not be misplaced here.

One more fact will serve to show to what extent the Romans carried their enthusiastic affection for leguminous plants: we know that illustrious families did not disdain to borrow their names from them. The appellations, Fabius, Cicero, and Lentulus, thus enhanced the humble renown of beans (faba), peas (cicer arietinum), and lentils (lenticula).[VII_13] The eminent orator we have just named gave the preference one day to a dish of beet-root, instead of oysters and lampreys, of which he was passionately fond.[VII_14] It is true that, since the promulgation of the Licinian law,[VII_15] which allowed but little meat and plenty of vegetables, the voluptuaries of Rome invented most astonishing ragouts of mushrooms and pot-herbs. So true is it that the genius of man develops itself more particularly under difficult circumstances, and that the art of cookery owes, perhaps, the perfection and glory which it has attained to the impediments with which its formidable enemy, frugality, seems always ready to surround it.

Apicius, that profound culinary chemist, who nobly expended immense treasures in inventing new dishes, and who killed himself[VII_16] because the remainder of his fortune was not sufficient for him (though to another it would have seemed magnificent)—Apicius shows us what he believed to be the most suitable manner of preserving vegetables. “Choose them,” he says, “before they are perfectly ripe, put them in a vessel coated with pitch, and cover it hermetically.”[VII_17]

The reader will decide for himself between this process and those which science has since discovered.

The capitulars (or statutes) of Charlemagne enter, on the subject of vegetables, into some instructive details. They inform us that lettuces, cresses, endive, parsley, chervil, carrots, leeks, turnips, onions, garlic, scallions, and eschalots, were nowhere to be found, except in the emperor’s kitchen-gardens. Charlemagne had all those vegetables sold, and derived from them a very considerable revenue.[VII_18]

Anderson makes an observation (under the date 1548), which deserves to be noticed here, were it only on account of its singularity. “The English,” says he, “cultivated scarcely any vegetable before the last two centuries. At the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII., neither salad, nor carrots, nor cabbages, nor radishes, nor any other comestibles of a like nature, were grown in any part of the kingdom; they came from Holland and Flanders.”

According to the author of a project, printed in London in 1723, in 8vo., “for the relief of the poor, and the payment of old debts, without the creation of new taxes,” Queen Catherine herself could not procure a salad for her dinner. The king was obliged to send over to Holland for a gardener to cultivate those pot-herbs, with which England is, perhaps, better furnished now than any other country in Europe.

Anderson asserts (1660) that cauliflowers were not known in England until about the time of the Restoration. And, lastly, the author of the “State of England,” printed in 1768, remarks that asparagus and artichokes were only introduced a few years antecedent to that date.