SALADS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1939, Page 10

SALADS

THEIR ORIGIN. As the word suggests, “salad” is something eaten with salt. The original salad attributed to the early Romans was a mixed mess consisting of a few cloves of bruised garlic, to which salt was added, then a lump of salted cheese, some young parsley tops, rue leaves and coriander seed—all well pounded together with vinegar and olive oil. Raw cabbage, lettuce and cucumber and all the edible roots eaten fresh, came later, about the time of Cleopatra who attributed her beauty to her daily onion. Garlic was abhorred in salad by Romans at this time. When Maecenas served it as a joke in Horace’s salad the poet thought it a very stale one. Cabbage became king of salad vegetables in the time of Diocletian. Salads were introduced to England by Catherine Parr, wife of Henry VIII., but she had to send to Holland for vegetables whenever she wanted to make a salad. Salad vegetables were all imported to England from Holland till the end of Henry’s reign, when carrots, turnips and other edible roots were grown at home. Salad was always regarded as healthgiving. In “The Transformation,” a poem written in 1796 by the Rev. Samuel Burdy, he mentions salad among the other sumptuous fare of the time, set out on table: “In the middle too was sallad, Health to serve and please the palate.” j Tomatoes are comparative newcomers. First grown in hot houses as “love apples,” they were thought to be poisonous by our ancestors. Cucumbers, mentioned twice in the Bible, were eaten fresh by Egyptians, but were cut up and soaked in vinegar till leathery and indigestible by our forebears, who also boiled cabbage three times before' eating it, and never used it in a salad.