The Return of the Skirret

Nicola here, and today I am talking about food, and in particular historic vegetables. If you look at old menus from hundreds of years ago – for a banquet at Hampton Court Palace for King Henry VIII, for example – there are plenty of dishes that might cause us to shudder. “Meat tile” anyone? It consists of chicken first simmered and then sautéed, served with a spicy sauce of crayfish tails, almonds and… toast.   Then there are pies with songbirds in them, lampreys in sauce… It’s all a matter of taste. One thing I had not realised, however, was that our ancestors ate vegetables that have completely disappeared from the menu today. I assumed that vegetables had evolved in that we eat the same things although they may look and taste different as a result of being grown commercially. However, I have never met anyone who has eaten a skirret.

“The sweetest, whitest and most pleasant of roots,” wrote gentleman gardener John Worlidge in 1677 of the skirret, a relative of the parsnip. The skirret was brought to Britain by the Romans and was popular in monastic gardens and on the Tudor table. Not only did it add flavour and sweetness to dishes, it was also considered medicinal. Physicians felt it was a good restorative and excellent for weak stomachs. It was also whispered to be “an effectual friend to Dame Venus,” an aphrodisiac. It has a sweet flavour on initial tasting that gives way to a carrot-type taste and ends on a peppery note.

Skirret’s downfall was that it was a slow grower and could not be cultivated as a commercial crop. Now, however, it has been re-introduced into the gardens at Hampton Court. It needs a rich soil and doesn’t mind the cold, which is one reason why it was popular in Scotland where it was known as a crummock. It also likes a lot of rain and grows wild on river banks, where it is known as the water parsnip. The flowers are like cow parsley, white, frothy and scented. At Hampton Court they serve it raw, like carrot, to get the full benefit of the delicate sweetness, and also fried in butter and garlic. The Tudors, who enjoyed a good “sallat” also used it instead of spring onion or radish in their salads. Perhaps we’ll see the skirret making a return to the Christmas table in place of parsnips.

Like skirret, the scorzonera was a very popular medieval vegetable and had at one point been suggested as an (unsuccessful) cure for the bubonic plague. A relative of the salsify, they have a similar flavour to artichokes. I mentioned the scorzonera to a friend who is a landscape gardener and he was very knowledgeable about it but it isn't on sale in the shops in the UK.

A candidate for “prettiest historical vegetable” has to be the strawberry spinach, which was brought to England by German monks
in the seventeenth century. These were also used as a salad vegetable and the pink flowers taste like malted milk biscuits! I'd be very happy to give that a try.

A Roman vegetable that never made it as far north as Britain was the cardoon, a thistle-type plant like an artichoke. It was a Roman custom to dip tender, young cardoon stems in a simple sauce of warm olive oil and butter and eat them raw. The bigger stems were typically baked, steamed, or fried. This sounds delicious and with warmer temperatures in northern Europe now there is a move to introduce the cardoon into Britain –only 2000 years after everyone further south had it!

It isn’t just “lost” fruits and vegetables that are being cultivated again but special varieties of familiar ones that are becoming more popular. Like the skirret, the Brighstone Bean has a colourful history. Shipwrecked on the Isle of Wight in the 18^th century, the seeds were found on a beach and it was cultivated there by gardeners even when it fell out of favour in the rest of Britain. It’s small, a mottled purple colour and has a very distinctive taste. From heirloom tomatoes to squashes, apples and peaches it seems that the old flavours are making a comeback.

I was one of those people who wasn’t keen on their vegetables as a child and I wasn’t much better with fruit. I hated peas, sprouts, turnips and broad beans.   Fortunately these days I like a lot of salad, vegetables and fruit, especially the old varieties like quinces. What about you? Have you ever eaten skirret? Would you try it if it was on the menu? Or do you have some other old favourite?

Comments

[Melinda Hammond]

For the past few seasons (roughly May - October) I have been having a weekly veg box from a small local cooperative here on the Pennines, where it is not easy to grow that much. Almost every week I play guess the vegetable - kale, chard, Jerusalem artichokes... and even the ones I know are nothing like the clean & uniform things you find in the shops! So yes, I would love to try these old vegetables!

[Nicola Cornick]

I've come to love kale through trying out veg boxes, Melinda. I think they are a wonderful thing. I love that you get new stuff to try and identify! Maybe they will slip in a bit of skirret and you'll be the only one who knows what it is. It should grow well in the Pennines!

[Melinda Hammond]

I think skirret sounds ideal for here if it likes cold and wet conditions. I have sent them the link to your blog, so who knows, it may turn up one day!

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

The beans look familiar. :p

Have you ever eaten quince stew? I'm not sure that's what I should call it in English, but I'm talking about a dish consisting of meat and chunks of quinces. A sweet-sour dish, not a favourite with some people, but it may grow on you. I loved the way my grandmother cooked it. I don't have the recipe, but I guess I could look for it.

http://www.bucataras.ro/uploads/modules/news/26380/656x440_mancare-de-gutui-131679.jpg

http://gurmandino.ro/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Mancare-gutui-vita7.jpg

http://www.bucatareasa.ro/content/movies/mancareDePrazCuGutui/DSCF7734_1.jpg

http://web13.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/reteta-pui-cu-gutui-retete-culinare-din-ardeal.jpg

It's not necessarily a Romanian food, I mean Jamie Oliver made something similar once, so I suppose it could be found in the UK as well.

[Oana-Maria Uliu]

As for the skirret, here people sometimes use the leaves, but so far I haven't seen anyone using the roots - no idea why not. Parsley, celeriac and parsnip are more common.

[Nicola Cornick]

Oh, that's very cool! Thanks for passing that on, Melinda, and do let us know if some skirret appears in your veg box!

[Nicola Cornick]

Hi Oana-Maria! I have heard of the quince stew and haven't eaten that one but versions of it with other fruits. I will make that next week! My favourite quince recipe is a sort of French toast with quinces and cream which is delicious. I also love merillo, a quince paste, which we eat with cheese. Yum!

[Nicola Cornick]

It's great that you have come across it at all! I hadn't heard of it. I think it had completely died out in the UK.

[Lillian Marek]

I'd love to try skirret (spell check wanted to change that to skirt, but I really don't want to eat a skirt!) and scorzonera (even though it sounds kind of like an unpleasant skin condition) and strawberry spinach. Especially strawberry spinach.
And maybe it will be possible. There are more and more vegetables appearing in the markets these days that weren't there when I was a child. Of course, some are disappearing, too. An aunt visiting from Ireland was amazed that there were no turnips in the market, by which she meant the yellow turnips, rutabagas. We only see them at Thanksgiving, and this year, I didn't see them at all. (I confess, I don't miss them!)
But we do have shallots and haricots vert and baby spinach and all sorts of lettuces to say nothing of kiwi fruits and a number of Latin American vegetables I don't know what to do with. It seems the only constant is change.

[Kathy K]

We've been subscribers for the past year to a food delivery service that provides all fresh, locally produced organic veggies and meats. The thing I like about it is that you don't have to search the grocery for ingredients and spices. Everything is included except for water, oil, salt and pepper. They have a full year of recipes so that you don't get tired of eating the same thing and they use world cuisines for inspiration. We have learned to cook and enjoy many veggies we never ate previously. Our choices before were broccoli, spinach, and green beans. There are so many different types of veggies that are really good if you know how to prepare them. I would definitely try a skirret if it came in the box with instructions on how to prepare it.

[StephanieL]

I am a vegetarian (mostly vegan) because of allergies so I tend to want ALL the vegetables for variety. I would love to try those listed except maybe the strawberry spinach...not a fan of malted anything. LOL I'm with some of the other posters in that we get a CSA box and it always feels a bit like Christmas morning when we pick it up. :-) The varieties of squashes and greens has been interesting. During the warm months we will occasionally get something I haven't tried (watermelon radishes!, lemon cucumbers!) and that's always fun. I never thought about vegetables vanishing like species of animals have.

[Nicola Cornick]

Haha! I love the spellcheck! Yes, Scorzonera definitely sounds like some sort of illness, doesn't it! I suppose there are fashions in vegetables and certainly we don't see much turnip or swede here these days but there is so much more to choose from. I do love having suc ha range of unusual things I can try!

[Nicola Cornick]

What a brilliant idea, Kathy. I love that you get the recipes as well, it's such a great way to discover new things.

[Nicola Cornick]

LOL, Stephanie! I love the idea that you don't know what's going to be in the box and it's life a special treat! That's really great. I've never heard of lemon cucumbers or watermelon radishes and would be up for trying both of those.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Nicola, the skirret sounds rather nice, but the marketing department needs to change the name. Ditto scorzonero. *G*

[Mary T]

I'll try at least a bite of anything once. The strawberry spinach looks most interesting. I don't buy many fresh fruits or vegies anymore. Mostly, I buy frozen.

One vegetable we ate a lot of when I was a child was turnips. Cant't say I miss them. I did like rutabaga though. They are sometimes available in the grocery store, but the last time I bought one, I had to tell the checkout person what it was so that she knew what to charge me (smile). Another thing that we had a lot of when I visited my aunt on her farm was gooseberries. As in gooseberry pie. Not bad, but not my favorite. Especially when compared to the blackberries that also grew in abundance on the farm.

Interesting post!

[Nicola Cornick]

LOL That is true, Mary Jo. Neither of them are going to attract through their names!

[Nicola Cornick]

I've never heard of the rutabaga, Mary, and wonder if it's called something else here. (I've just looked it up and think we may have it as a swede/turnip, except that you don't see it much these days. The same goes for gooseberries. Maybe they will be the next heritage fruit. You have reminded me, though, of the red gooseberries we had when I was a child. I haven't seen them for years and they were lovely.

[Patricia Rice]

I'm easily bored with veggies, so I'm always willing to experiment. We grew a tomato this year that came from one of the original plants grown here. It produced fruits larger than a cherry tomato but certainly nothing like our giant tomatoes today!

[Sue McCormick]

I would be glad to try these. Mostly I haven't heard of them. We try to include one or two fruits or vegetable a meal, but aren't always successful.A very interesting post.

As for the Rutabaga — Let me introduce a literary treat. Calr Sandburg wrote a series of children's stories called "Rutabaga Stories" or "Rootabaga Stories." The stories have nothing to do with the vegetable. But children love the name as well as the stories!

[Nicola Cornick]

That sounds fun, Pat! I love homegrown tomatoes. They always seem to have more flavour.

[Nicola Cornick]

Oh how wonderful about the Rutabaga Stories. Thank you, Sue!

[Patricia Franzino]

I love an old favorite my mother always used in a salad - chicory. It's crispy, slightly bitter taste is great for a vegetarian/vegan like me.

I'd like to try these vegetables from hundreds of years ago. It would certainly give more variety to my meals.

[Lillian Marek]

I have to pop in again for a word about home-grown vegetables. Years ago, when my kids were small, I had a large vegetable garden. One day I had picked a huge bowl of peas and set my daughter and her friends to shell them. They asked if they could eat some of them. I said "Sure!" I mean, after all, who's going to tell kids they may not eat vegetables? And raw fresh peas are absolutely delicious.
I ended up with about half a cup of peas for dinner.

[Anne Gracie]

A lot of fruits and vegetables have changed names as well as appearances. Purple carrots are making a comeback here -- that dark colour was bred out of them. And when I was a kid we ate "Chinese gooseberries" -- until the NZers started a huge and clever marketing campaign and now half the world calls them Kiwi fruit.

So I can't say whether or not I have eaten a skirret. A skirret by any other name would, I presume, taste as sweet :)

[Nicola Cornick]

Hi Patricia. I love chicory in a salad too. I really like that distinctive taste. It must be a challenge finding different combinations of vegetables so the introduction of some old vegetables would be interesting!

[Nicola Cornick]

Haha! I totally sympathise with your daughter there. I don't like cooked peas much but the fresh ones are very very tasty. And hey, there might not have been many left for dinner but at least you knew they had eaten healthily!

[Nicola Cornick]

LOL, very good, Anne! It's so interesting to find out what is eaten around the world. One of the things I love about travelling is coming across fruit and vegetables I haven't had before. And I love the different coloured carrots! Also the different sorts of squash you can get now. I had no idea however about "Chinese gooseberries." That really was a marketing coup for the kiwis!

[Mary M.]

I saw "suc ha" and thought, aha, a new Asian veggie to seek out! Now I'm disappointed ... color me a major foodie, love this post and comments.

[Mary M.]

But think about parsnip, rutabaga, turnip, radish, carrot, spinach--would you try those based on the names, if you didn't already know what they were? What's in a name? Familiarity, or lack thereof. (I rather like "skirret.")

[Nicola Cornick]

Ha! Yes, that sounds the perfect vegetable. So pleased you enjoyed the post, Mary!

[Nicola Cornick]

Yes, that is a very good point. None of those names sound particularly attractive! I suppose skirret makes me imagine an animal rather than a vegetable, a cross between a squirrel and a ferret maybe.

[Teresa Broderick]

I'd definitely be up for trying the skirret if I could get my hands on it. I'll try anything and love vegetables. We do a bit of grow your own here. This year we had potatoes, carrots, onions, radish and lettuce, (the last of which I picked a week ago due to our unseasonably mild weather). It was a small selection this year. It was very wet well into April and we were late getting them into the ground.
I'd love to see some of the older out of favour veg making a comeback. I'm all for the old stuff. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century.

[Karin]

The only one of those vegetables that I've heard of is cardoon. I do grow some heirloom tomatoes, and my favorite is Cherokee Purple.
But since everyone is talking about rutabaga, aka yellow turnip, I eat them all the time. I just made a yellow turnip souffle for Thanksgiving, and the family loved it! You peel and cut a small yellow turnip in chunks and boil or steam it. The recipe calls for about a pound, but I've used 1 1/2 lbs and it still works fine. Drain, and mash them well in a bowl. Add about a cup or so of fresh(soft) bread crumbs and 1 cup of milk. Season with salt, pepper and a dash of nutmeg if you like. Separate 3 eggs, and mix the yolks into the turnip mixture. Beat the whites until stiff. Fold them gently into the turnips, and transfer to a buttered souffle dish. Place the dish in a shallow pan of hot water and bake at 350F until the souffle is puffed and lightly browned. This recipe comes from the Larousse Treasury of Country Cooking which is one of my favorite cookbooks.

[Nicola Cornick]

That's a pretty good range of stuff you are growing, Teresa. I do like fresh salad stuff from our own garden and we our best with herbs too. Oddly the word "skirret'" is growing on me (sorry for the pun!)

[Nicola Cornick]

Thank you for sharing the rutabaga recipe, Karin. I must say it sounds absolutely delicious. Love a souffle so I would really like to try it. I must see if I can find out what we call a rutabaga here - whether it is a special sort of turnip/swede. I also love the different coloured tomatoes!

[Kareni]

What a fascinating post! And now I'm hungry especially for some homegrown tomatoes which I won't be seeing until July or so.

[Nicola Cornick]

They will be worth the wait!