SC - The Potato Recipe

[Tim & Dee]

> now, somewhere I learned that iceberg lettuce was developed in the early
> days
> of the california mega-farm industry.  It was developed to be shipped east
> by
> train in cars kept cool with huge chunks of ice. I'm pretty sure that
> butter
> crunch and boston lettuce are recente developments as well.  What might be
> a
> more period choice?  Romaine?  Endive?
> 
> Bonne
> 
Iceberg went into commercial production in 1894, but it was grown prior to
that and was known as Crisphead lettuce.  

According to Root, the Anglo-Saxons did not cultivate lettuce, but gathered
it wild.  Charlemagne directed that it be grown in his gardens and
apparently it has been grown in French gardens all through period, but that
during the Middle Ages, watercress was more preferred and grown
commercially.

In 1574, four kinds of lettuce were being cultivated in France; the small,
the common, the curled, and the Roman.  The Roman is Romaine.  The curled is
a loose head lettuce of which Butter lettuce is a variety.  Common is
probably leaf lettuce and, as a guess, small lettuce is a small head
lettuce.

I tend to use leaf or Romaine when I cook, but that's more from flavor than
any sense of history.

Bear
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