16th Century British Salads

Salads as we think of them now are not what you might have once thought them to be.  It is quite interesting to thing as you state down at you lettuce tomato and cucumber, or coleslaw or my most favourite potato salad, and thing how the salad originated in to what it is today.

Once a salad would have been eaten as a medicine more than any thing else and most of it roots go back to herbalist picking a rang of herbs roots and other edible things and letting you eat it to do you good. The lettuce was known to promote relaxation and aide sleep, beetroot was a blood and good for piles and constipation, endive was a cure for gout, and chicory would stop you from swooning and passions of the hart.

My favourite of them all of them was the cucumber used for bad eye site and to scare away mice it was also said that “Wives wishing for children” should ties a cucumber around their waist, and they as carried by midwives , but had to be thorn away when the child was born.

Now how much of this was true it is hard to say and now we have what can be called hard scientific fact and we do know now that tomatoes and beetroot juice hep reduce the risk of cancer, not to mention the many other pant extracts and herbs that we know can do you good.

So this could be why you think that eating salad is good for you.  Therefore, to night I will be posting a sixteen century salad recipe that I have.  Until the sixteen century you salad could have been mixed greens like leeks, fennel, watercress and lots of herbs mint, borage, parsley and sage.  It was the Elizabethans, no doubt influenced by the Italians in the renaissance,   who started to introduce meat, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, and pickles all on a bed of green leaves.  And this would be decorated edible flowers.

For this sixteenth century salad you will need

12 spinach leaves

6 cabbage leaves finely shredded

2 harts of cabbage lettuce sliced

2 oranges and 2 lemons cut into rounds and sugared

6 pickled cucumbers sliced

A small handful of raisins

A small handful of almonds sliced in half and browned in butter

4 dried figs chopped

12 green olives

2 table spoons of cappers

For a dressing 3 parts oil to one part vinegar sugar freshly made English mustard and slat and pepper.

I do not know what this would have tasted like and I do not really know what cabbage lettuce is or was.  But you can see how the used of fruit and vegetables, pickles and what looks like a very modern dressing lead us to the salads that we know today.