Pre-mixed field greens - was: Re: SC - salads (long)

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Phil & Susan Troy wrote:

<<What I meant was that while lettuce was eaten in period, it seems to have
been

consumed mostly in the Eastern Mediterranean regions, and does not appear in

any salad recipes I can think of offhand. I think it's going to be near the

eighteenth century before it will appear with any frequency in an English

salad recipe>>

I'm looking at my copy of The English Housewife, written by Gervase Markham in
1615. In chapter 2, section 11 and 12, it says:

"Of sallats. Simple sallats.
First then to speak of sallats, there be some simple, and some compounded;
some only to furnish out the table, and some both for use and adornation; your
simple sallats are chibols peeled, washed clean, and half oteh green tops cut
clean away, so served on a fruit dish; or chives, scallions, radish roots,
boiled carrots, skirrets, and turnips, with such like served up simply; also,
all young lettuce, cabbage lettuce, purslane, and divers other herbs which may
be served simply without anything but a little vinegar, sallat oil, and sugar;
onions boiled, and stripped from their rind and served up with vinegar, oil
and pepper is a good simple sallat; so is samphire, bean cods, asparagus, and
cucumbers, served in likewise with oil, vinegar, and pepper, with a world of
others, too tedius to nominate.

Of compound sallats.
Your compound sallats are first the young buds and knots of all manner of
wholesome herbs at their first springing; as red sage, mints, lettuce,
violets, marigold, spinach and many other mixed together, and then served up
to the table with vinegar, sallat oil and sugar."

The English Housewife, by Gervase Markham, edited by Michael R Best, and
published by McGill-Queen Unversity Press. The ISBN of the paperback edition
is 0-7735-1103-2.

Your humble servant,
Rosalyn MacGregor
(Pattie Rayl)
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