Platina on salads

[bunnyjadwiga]

From Platina (Milham translation):

Seasoned Salad. There may be likewise a seasoned salad from lettuce, borage [buglosso]*, mint, calamint, fennel, parsley, wild thyme, marjoram, chervil, sow's-thistle... lancet [lanceola], which they call lamb's tongue, nightshade [morella], flower of fennel, and several other aromatic herbs, well washed and with the water pressed out. They need a large dish. They ought to be sprinkled with a lot of salt and moistened with oil, then after vinegar has been poured over and when they have sat for a little , their wild toughness demands eating and chewing with the teeth. This dish requires more oil and less vinegar. It is more suitable in winter than in summer because it requires more digestion, which is strong in winter.

I think morella may be pellitory of the wall, not nightshade; lanceola may be narrow-leafed plantain; and buglosso is probably ox-tongue, not the regular borage modern American herbalists think of. That is, Picris echioides, not borago.
On 'borage' [buglossi] Platina says, "what the Greeks call buglossos, we will call ox tongue..."

[Oxtongue] is seasoned both raw and boiled. After it has been well-washed and pressed in a net made especially for the purpose, put raw buglossi in a dish with calamint, mint, and parsley, sprinkle on salt and oil and toss until it absorbs the oil and its sharpness softness. Finally, add vinegar and serve immediately to your guests. When it is boiled, it is seasoned in the same way as lettuce."

Hm. What about this special net? Could it be a primitive salad-spinner, whirled around the head to remove the water in the greens?
Unlike most period writers, Platina addresses lettuce first among the salad ingredients:

There are several varieties of this vegetable, but broad-stemmed, low-growning, and curly, and are really praised before all others. They are planted all year... it aids digestion and generates better blood than other vegetables. It is eaten cooked or raw. You season raw lettuce this way if it does not need washing, for that is more healthful than what has been washed in water; put it in a dish, sprinkle with ground salt, pour in a little oil and more vinegar and eat at once. Some add a little mint and parsley to it for seasoning so that it does not seem entirely bland and the excessive chill of the lettuce does not harm the stomach. Put cooked lettuce, with the water pressed out, in a pan and serve it to your guests seasoned with salt, oil and vinegar. Some sprinkle a bit of well-ground and sifted cinnamon or pepper on it."

At other points, Platina suggests other salad herbs, some of which he says are very good but digest slowly, and others which seem to digest easily.

• Endive, both cultivated and wild, "this is seasoned in the same way as lettuce, not only raw but boiled."
• Purslane (Portulacae) "well washed, separated from its hard stalk and put in a dish, it is seasoned with finely-cut onion, salt, oil, and vinegar. Some sprinkle on pepper or cinnamon to repress the chill of purslane, for purslane... is cold and moist, and for this reason it is not thought to be of much nourishment."
• Rosemary flowers as a very special salad: "gathered in the morning and not washed so they do not wholly lose their force. Seasoned with well-ground salt, oil and vinegar, they make for pleasure and healthfulness."
• Chicory: "in spring it is healthful for us to eat stalks, in summer, leaves, and in winter, roots, with salt, oil and vinegar, after they have been well washed and hollowed out because of their hardness and bitterness. . . Its flowers are in no way inferior to the stalk, they are seasoned in the same way as described above."
• [Saxifrage] which Milham says is maidenhair fern: "its root is like parsley. When it has been scraped and cut in pieces it is eaten with salt, oil and vinegar."
• Pimpernel... "when it is gathered and washed, it ought to be put in a dish with its own stalk, if it is tender, and seasoned with salt, oil and vinegar. If it is very tough, only the leaves are eaten."
• Sorrel, from the description either long-leaved french sorrel or  a trefoil-like version-- maybe sheep sorrel, though he says that <I>rumice</I> is not eaten. "Some even eat sorrel right away without washing it, as a first course with bread and without any other seasoning. . . . Some add vinegar, a few, oil. However you eat it, it is healthful, especially in summer and in a pestilential season."
  

More boiled salads:

• Cooked chicory: "especially if you eat it with vinegar cooked down with raisins, or if you put some condensed must in the dish and sprinkle it with the amount of ground cinnamon you want."
• "Boiled asparagus is laid on a plate, and salt, oil and vinegar are added. Some sprinkle it with aromatic seasonings."
• "The stalk of tender mallow is boiled, with the sprout removed, and put in a dish like aspargus and eaten with salt, oil and vinegar. The flowers are seasoned in the same way. . ."