An excellent herb with which to flavour salads, particularly
those of lettuce, is the borage — Borago officinalis, L. ; French,
hourrache — with rough spiny leaves and blue flowers. The
name borago is conjectured to be a modification of the verb
corago, I rejoice the heart.
The use of garlic in salads is as contested a subject as the
use of these bulbs in general cookery. It is a practice of
those desirous of imparting a mild garlic flavour to cichory
or endive salad to place on the bottom of the salad-bowl a
crust of stale bread which has been rubbed with more or
less garlic. This small piece of bread is, in-France, called
a capon {chapon). Of this name some humorous, though
conflicting, explanations have been given, in which the
Greek island of Cos, and the county of Gaux in France,
dispute each other the honour of having first produced the
capon. On the other hand, it is asserted that the chapon,
consisting of a crust of stale bread rubbed with garlic,
originated neither in Cos nor in Caux, but in Gascony ; and
it is surmised that as the Gascons were poor and inclined to
vanity, it might have, occurred to one of them to call the
crust rubbed with garlic in the bottom of his salad-bowl a
‘ capon,’ in order to be able truthfully to reply to sympathetic
friends inquiring after his dinner, or to spontaneously boast,
that he had dined superbly on a and salad. And this
combination of salad with a piece of bread a humorist has
alleged to be a good enough dinner for a Gascon.
USE AND AVOIDANCE OF GAELIC
359
While the Egyptians, apparently of all ranks, valued
garlic highly, the higher society of the Greeks absolutely
detested it. The Eomans, on the whole, used it regularly.
Virgil speaks of it as useful to the reapers during periods of
great heat, and Macer, also a poet, believed that it would
keep serpents away from sleepers. Nevertheless, according
to Athenteus, the more refined part of society put an inter-
dict upon its use, which took this emphatic form — that it
was made an offence to enter a temple of Cybele after having
eaten garlic. Horace having on the day of his first arrival
at Eome dined on sheep’s head dressed with garlic, and
contracted an indigestion, ever after entertained feelings of
abhorrence for the bulb. King Alphonso of Castile had a
similar dislike ; for when he created a new order of knights
in 1368, he forbade them to eat any garlic. In our century
Easpail did yet recommend garlic as a wholesome flavour ;
and the gall-stone specialist Durand, in recommending it to
patients, ascribed to it the quality of sapidity, probably by
a confusion of terms.
Page 227
Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
An excellent herb with which to flavour salads, particularly those of lettuce, is the borage — Borago officinalis, L. ; French, hourrache — with rough spiny leaves and blue flowers. The name borago is conjectured to be a modification of the verb corago, I rejoice the heart.
The use of garlic in salads is as contested a subject as the use of these bulbs in general cookery. It is a practice of those desirous of imparting a mild garlic flavour to cichory or endive salad to place on the bottom of the salad-bowl a crust of stale bread which has been rubbed with more or less garlic. This small piece of bread is, in-France, called a capon {chapon). Of this name some humorous, though conflicting, explanations have been given, in which the Greek island of Cos, and the county of Gaux in France, dispute each other the honour of having first produced the capon. On the other hand, it is asserted that the chapon, consisting of a crust of stale bread rubbed with garlic, originated neither in Cos nor in Caux, but in Gascony ; and it is surmised that as the Gascons were poor and inclined to vanity, it might have, occurred to one of them to call the crust rubbed with garlic in the bottom of his salad-bowl a ‘ capon,’ in order to be able truthfully to reply to sympathetic friends inquiring after his dinner, or to spontaneously boast, that he had dined superbly on a and salad. And this
combination of salad with a piece of bread a humorist has alleged to be a good enough dinner for a Gascon.
USE AND AVOIDANCE OF GAELIC
While the Egyptians, apparently of all ranks, valued garlic highly, the higher society of the Greeks absolutely detested it. The Romans, on the whole, used it regularly. Virgil speaks of it as useful to the reapers during periods of great heat, and Macer, also a poet, believed that it would keep serpents away from sleepers. Nevertheless, according to Athenaeus, the more refined part of society put an interdict upon its use, which took this emphatic form — that it was made an offence to enter a temple of Cybele after having eaten garlic. Horace having on the day of his first arrival at Rome dined on sheep’s head dressed with garlic, and contracted an indigestion, ever after entertained feelings of abhorrence for the bulb. King Alphonso of Castile had a similar dislike ; for when he created a new order of knights in 1368, he forbade them to eat any garlic. In our century Raspail did yet recommend garlic as a wholesome flavour ; and the gall-stone specialist Durand, in recommending it to patients, ascribed to it the quality of sapidity, probably by a confusion of terms.