SC - Rhubarb (was "Berries)

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Ras wrote:
>A good point. However, eggplant was readily consumed as food and it's stems
>and leaves are equally poisonous.

As are potato and tomato leaves and stems. And both were in many regions
treated with great suspicion at first.

I was wondering if the rising popularity of rhubarb might be directly
connected with falling prices of sugar, since rhubarb is so acidic and most
recipes require the use of quite a lot of sugar. Rhubarb was very much the
spring vegetable of the lower and middle classes of Northern Europe, who
wouldn´t have been able to afford much sugar (if any at all) before the 19th
century.

As Francesco Sirene pointed out, rhubarb seems to have been used in Middle
Eastern cooking many centuries earlier, but then only as a souring agent.
(I´m definitely going to try out one of the rhubarb khoresh recipes I have
next time I can find rhubarb.)

Nanna





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