Quotation from: Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period

Written by: Paul Lacroix


In the thirteenth century, the plants fit for cooking went under the
general appellation of _aigrun_, and amongst them, at a later date, were
ranked oranges, lemons, and other acid fruits. St. Louis added to this
category even fruits with hard rinds, such as walnuts, filberts, and
chestnuts; and when the guild of the fruiterers of Paris received its
statutes in 1608, they were still called "vendors of fruits and _aigrun_."


The vegetables and cooking-plants noticed in the "Menagier de Paris,"
which dates from the fourteenth century, and in the treatise "De
Obsoniis," of Platina (the name adopted by the Italian Bartholomew
Sacchi), which dates from the fifteenth century, do not lead us to suppose
that alimentary horticulture had made much progress since the time of
Charlemagne. Moreover, we are astonished to find the thistle placed
amongst choice dishes; though it cannot be the common thistle that is
meant, but probably this somewhat general appellation refers to the
vegetable-marrow, which is still found on the tables of the higher
classes, or perhaps the artichoke, which we know to be only a kind of
thistle developed by cultivation, and which at that period had been
recently imported.

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