The kitchen garden of the ancients contained mostly the vegetables, herbs, and roots, of which we still make use; but they also cultivated certain other kinds, which modern cookery has either put aside or rarely employs. We shall describe all those which appear most worthy of notice.
CABBAGE.
This plant has experienced the fate of a host of human things that have not been able to bear the weight of a too brilliant reputation. Time has done justice to the extraordinary qualities attributed to it, and the cabbage now remains, what it ought always to have been, an estimable vegetable and nothing more.
The Egyptians adored it, and raised altars to it. They afterwards made of this strange god the first dish of their repasts, and were imitated in this particular by the Greeks and Romans, who ascribed to it the happy quality of preserving from drunkenness.[IX_13] It was more particularly the red cabbage that obtained these honours and prerogatives. From Italy the victorious legions introduced it among the Gauls, as well as the green cabbage; the white species appears to belong originally to southern countries.
Hippocrates had a peculiar affection for this vegetable. Should one of his patients be seized with a violent cholic, he at once prescribed a dish of boiled cabbage with salt.[IX_14] Erasistratus looked upon it as a sovereign remedy against paralysis. Pythagoras, and several other learned philosophers, composed books in which they celebrated the marvellous virtues of the cabbage.[IX_15]
A writer, not less serious than those we have just quoted, the wise Cato, affirms that this plant infallibly cures all diseases; and pretends to have used this panacea to preserve his family from the plague, which, otherwise, would not have failed to reach them. It is to the use the Romans made of it, he adds, that they were able during six hundred years to do without the assistance of physicians, whom they had expelled from their territories.[IX_16] This bold assertion deserved a little retaliation on the part of the faculty; so they deposed the cabbage from the rank occupied by it in medicine, and banished it to the kitchen.
The Athenian ladies formerly partook of the general enthusiasm in favour of this wholesome vegetable, which was always served to them when a new-born infant required their maternal love and care.[IX_17]
The ancients were acquainted with three principal kinds of cabbage: the silken-leaved, the curled, and the hard, round, white cabbage.[IX_18]
Apicius does not busy himself with any one of these varieties in particular in the various preparations he points out, and which we submit to the appreciation of connoisseurs: