[Sca-cooks] Beets (was Eggplant)

[david friedman]

"I just checked the version in Madge Lorwin's book, and it also says 
to "chop the beets".  I have always made the pie using the roots, as 
she indicates in her redaction.  She bases hers on statements from 
Gerard's "Herbal".  The first part, which she quotes, acknowledges 
the use of the leaves in salads, even giving a recipe for doing so. 
Then she quotes him as saying, "But what might be made of the red and 
beautiful root (which is to be preferred before the leaves, as well 
in beautie as in goodness) I refer unto the curious and cunning 
cooke, who no doubt when hee had the view there, and is assured that 
it is both good and wholesome, will make thereof many and divers 
dishes, both faire and good."  Lorwin goes on to state, "And beets 
were used in mnay ways by cooks, including beet-root salads, both hot 
and cold.""

I would take the quote from Gerard as implying that people aren't 
using the roots, or not very much--it sounds as though he is saying 
that they should be. "... who no doubt when ... will make thereof."

Gerard's Herbal was first published in 1597, with various later 
editions; do you know which version that passage first appeared in? 
It's in the 1633 edition--which at least suggests that eating the 
root was still uncommon then, although it might have just been left 
in through inertia.

Checking some webbed extracts from the 1633 edition, we have:

"Beta alba. White Beets.
...the white Beete is a cold and moist pot-herbe...Being eaten when 
it is boyled, it quickly descendeth... especially being taken with 
the broth wherein it is sodden..."

Beta rubra, Beta rubra Romana. Red Beets, Red Roman Beets.

...The great and beautiful Beet last described may be vsed in winter 
for a salad herbe, with vinegar, oyle, and salt, and is not onely 
pleasant to the taste, but also delightfull to the eye.

The greater red Beet or Roman Beet, boyled and eaten with oyle, 
vineger and pepper, is a most excellent and delicate sallad: but what 
might be made of the red and beautifull root ...

I take this to mean that white beets were used exclusively as beet 
greens, red beets primarily, and Gerard is urging that the root ought 
to be eaten.

Is there any reason to assume the recipe is calling for red beets? It 
looks from Anne Wilson's comments as though they were a novelty in 
Elizabethan times--and she has a reference to Digby referring to 
beets where they are pretty clearly the greens.

A web search turned up this--from the Floreligium:

Take Beets, chop them small, and put to them grated bread and cheese,
and mingle them wel in the chopping, take a few Corrans, and a dish of
sweet Butter, & melt it then stir al these in the Butter, together with
three yolks of Eggs, Synamon, ginger, and sugar, and make your Tart as
large as you will, and fill it with the stuff, bake it and serve it in.
	--John Partridge, The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin

That's from Dining with William Shakespeare, by Madge Lorwin. 
Partridge is 1594--i.e. a little before the earliest edition of 
Gerard. There is nothing there that implies the roots are being 
used--and if the red beets are new, and Gerard is trying to persuade 
people to use the roots forty years later, there should be if that's 
what is intended.

The dangers of relying on secondary sources.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/