Very few esculent plants are mentioned in the Accounts of the Middle
Ages. Dried peas and beans, parsley, fennel, onions, green peas, and new
beans, are the only species named. Pot-herbs, of which the names are not
specified, but which served eleven days, cost 6_d_. There is much
uncertainty upon the subject of the cultivation of vegetables, in this
country, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Cresses,
endive, lettuces, beets, parsnips, carrots, cabbages, leeks, radishes,
and cardoons, were grown in France during the reign of Charlemagne; but
it is doubtful whether many of these varieties had penetrated into
England at that early period. The most skilful horticulturists of the
Middle Ages were ecclesiastics, and it is possible that in the gardens
of monasteries many vegetables were reared which were not in common use
among the laity. Even in the fifteenth century, the general produce of
the English kitchen garden was contemptible when compared with that of
the Low Countries, France, and Italy. Gilbert Kymer can enumerate only,
besides a few wild and forgotten sorts, cabbage, lettuce, spinach,
beetroot, trefoil, bugloss, borage, celery, purslane, fennel, smallage,
thyme, hyssop, parsley, mint, a species of turnip, and small white
onions. According to him, all these plants were boiled with meat. He
observes also that some were eaten raw, in spring and summer, with
olive-oil and spices, but questions the propriety of the custom. This
is, perhaps, the earliest notice extant of the use of salads in England.
The subject of the supplies of the table with food is a very large one;
and leaves us but space to remark that the condition of food, an
important point of its worth, must have suffered from the slow mode of
conveyance in former times. The advantages which we enjoy in this age of
rapid transit have been thus cleverly illustrated by a contemporary:--"A
little more than half a century ago it took about six weeks to drive the
herds of cattle from the north of Scotland to the metropolis: now they
can be whirled here in a few hours. Fish in great variety may be caught
in the morning on the coast of Berwick and Coquet, and be boiling in the
kitchens of Belgravia on the same evening for dinner. In exchange for
the sheep and beeves from the highlands and Cheviot, the choice fruits
and early vegetables of the south are rapidly passed. By means of
steamships and other quick sailing vessels, the oranges of Spain and
Portugal, the grapes of France and Italy, and the oxen, sheep, fruits,
&c. of other foreign parts are brought in fine condition; and delicacies
which were not easily obtained even by the rich are now common amongst
the multitude. But for this increased facility of conveyance how would
it be possible to feed the immense multitude of London, which, in half a
century of time, will in all probability number 5,000,000?"