From *THe Home Book of English Cookery*

[mme_hardy]

Joyce Stubbs, 1972

Artichokes are an expensive delicacy on the English market and usually imported. ...It is easily digested and one of the few vegetables that diabetics are allowed to eat. (!)

Comments

[movingfinger]

Is the idea here that artichokes are low glycemic index? Or that vegetables are dangerous?

[mme_hardy]

I think the idea is that vegetables are dangerous!

[pameladean]

Yikes, and I think being diabetic with the possibly not really all that accurate or universally-applicable food restrictions is annoying NOW.

P.

[dsrtao]

I have the feeling that in 1972, the English thought of vegetables as being:

potatoes
peas
turnips
marrows (squash)

and foreign things, possibly French. Mom emigrated in 1974 or so, and she said that food was as much better here than there as the difference between then and now (we had this conversation in the mid 2000s).

[oursin]

Carrots and parsnips would be included, also cabbage (boiled to death) and cauliflower. Brussels sprouts! (in season)

I have cookery books on my shelves which list the places you could could go to get rare and unusual things like aubergines which are now in every supermarket (present delivery issues permitting).

[mme_hardy]

I saw the first Julia Child *Mastering the Art of French Cooking* episode a year or two ago. She held up a bottle of thyme and explained that you could ask your grocer to order it.

[oursin]

When I was at uni in the late 60s, I remember going into the nearest town and there was a deli where you could get that exotic spice, paprika, which they would weigh out for you into a paper bag.

[neotoma]

Are eggplants difficult to grow in the English climate or something? I'm living in a USDA zone 7 area, and the only things I have difficulty growing in my garden are vegetables like green peas require more cool weather than we get -- as we occasionally get summer temperatures in March, let alone May. Eggplants, I easily have more than I will eat, even if I only plant one plant.

[nineveh_uk]

Aubergines aren't commercially viable in the UK, it's not warm/sunny enough, though gardeners can grow them in a greenhouse or on a windowsill indoors if they are started early (my sister did this year). It's the same as fruit like peaches, the summer just isn't warm and sunny for long enough for them to ripen on any scale beyond that one tree in someone's southern, south-facing garden that got lucky. Even tomatoes need a greenhouse for a good crop.

Courgettes, OTOH, grow with tremendous enthusiasm.

[oursin]

They were not a traditional crop, and only became widely known in the second half of the C20th as a result of Mediterranean travel and Elizabeth David's works. However, research in older domestic manuals might shed further light, although Jane Grigson, in her Vegetable Book rather implied that they were a recent introduction to the British kitchen, unlike (surprisingly?) many of the veggies she discussed.

Courgettes (zucchini) can be grown here, as they are simply what happens if you harvest marrows before they become grossly bloated and tasteless.

[mme_hardy]

BTW, I finished the book last night and read the back jacket, and the author's previous book, The Home Review of Greek Cookery, got a glowing review from Elizabeth David in The Spectator.

[neotoma]

As far as I can tell, zucchini are an almost guaranteed to succeed crop -- the joke when I was a kid was that you couldn't leave your car windows down when you parked, or you might come back to find you'd been gifted with a grocery bag full of zucchini because people couldn't give enough of them away and had to resort to reverse burglary to get rid of them.

[mme_hardy]

Yup. In my hometown, there were also jokes about leaving bags of zucchini on somebody's porch, ringing the bell, and running away.

When you plant zucchini, there are only two possible states: no zucchini, or too much zucchini. Zucchini bread wasn't invented because people *wanted* a sweet bread made from zucchini. It was pure desperation. I'm mildly surprised nobody invented zucchini marmalade.

[clanwilliam]

Marrow jam has a long tradition in the UK, although these days the courgette glut would be more likely to be chutneyed instead.

[mme_hardy]

Actually, this cookbook has a quite comprehensive section on vegetables, leading with a warning that "The gloomy sight and pervading odour of sodden cabbage, overboiled beans and cauliflower is only too well known." People who took food seriously were reading and cooking from books like this.

[perennialanna]

Not marrows at all - they were a "And what am I supposed to do with *that*?" in the mid-80s at school Harvest Festivals.

Cabbages and their cousins. A lot of cabbages and their cousins.

[mme_hardy]

A time Bojo is nostalgic for, because his family will still be eating the imported stuff.