Friday, October 29, 2010
The edible weeds that grew among the cultivated vegetables in the medieval kitchen garden were also harvested and used as potherbs. Above, from left to right: purslane, a succulent weed of fertile soils, is a common weed in our own vegetable gardens; lamb’s quarters, also known as “fat hen,” is now a very common weed in the United States; Good King Henry is related to the nutritious lamb’s quarters and was cultivated as a vegetable. Photographs by Corey Eilhardt.
A weed is a plant you don’t want. An herb is a plant with a use. But many of the “weedy” species that are considered garden nuisances today were actually valued in the Middle Ages. Edible weeds growing in the kitchen garden, along with the cultivated vegetables, were used in pottage, a basic medieval dish. (For more on pottage, see last week’s post, “Colewort and Kale.”) Read more »
Tags: cabbage, Chenopodium album, Chenopodium bonus-henricus, dandelion, Good King Henry, herb, kale, lamb's quarters, leek, Portulaca oleracea, pottage, purslane, ribwort plantain, weed
Posted in Food and Beverage Plants, Gardening at The Cloisters, Medicinal Plants | Comments (4)
Friday, October 22, 2010
The Brassicaceae, or mustard family, contains many vegetables with a long history in the European diet. Cabbage, kale, broccoli, and cauliflower are all forms of a single polymorphic species, Brassica oleracea. Above from right to left: Collard is the closest available approximation to the colewort, the primitive cultivated cabbage of the Middle Ages. The tight, heading cabbages we know today were developed from the colewort. Sea kale (Crambe maritima), which was gathered from the wild, belongs to a separate genus within the Brassica family.?? Photographs by Corey Eilhardt.
Cabbages and kales have been eaten, improved, and eaten some more for centuries. The medieval cabbage, or colewort, (see the first image for the etymology of “colewort”) was one of the mainstays of the medieval diet, at least for those ordinary mortals outside courtly circles, whose more refined cuisine has been preserved in cookbooks???such as the famous Forme of Cury???of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The greens were cooked and eaten alone, or were included in pottage???sometimes spelled “potage”???a kind of thick soup or porridge made from vegetables boiled with grain. Read more »
Tags: Brassica oleracea, Brassicaceae, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, colewort, Crambe maritima, gout, kale, Landsberg, mustard, palsy, ulcer
Posted in Food and Beverage Plants, Gardening at The Cloisters | Comments (1)
