Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Vegetables in Season (1823)

While considering salad receipts for Sunday, I can across a handy marketing chart in The Cook's Oracle (1823) showing not only the expected dates when different vegetables would be in season, but also their earliest "forced" dates (when the item would be rare and commanding the highest price due to the extra effort needed to grow it out of season) and when each is at its cheapest price in London. Given an on-going frustration with my local food history research (specifically that non-staple "garden" produce is recorded only in general terms) and the climate similarities, I'm finding it a helpful supplement for deciding when to use which ingredients.


Marketing Guide for London, from The Cook's Oracle (5th ed, 1823) pages 412-413.

Intriguingly, I can document the use of garden frames quite early in pre-Territorial Washington, so depending on the context, some of those "forced" dates could possible for local events. Looking over the chart, here in early June I might be choosing from the last Jerusalem artichokes [admittedly not a plant I've documented here], early French [green] or kidney beans, Windsor (fava) beans, red beets, carrots, cauliflower, maybe forced cucumbers, endive (which is just coming to useful size in my garden), lettuce (also in the garden), cabbage, parsley (doing very well in containers), potatoes, radishes, red & white turnips, small salad (micro-greens?), the last of the sea kale, spring spinach (abundant in my garden), turnips, and turnip greens for salad.

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