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2. History
Wild
sea beet (Beta vulgaris subspecies maritima) has thrived around
the coastlines of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia,
since prehistoric times. The leaves of sea beet have probably been collected
and used as a potherb since humans first started experimenting with edible
green plants. Sea beet was first domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean
and the Middle East. It is the ancestor of all the cultivated forms of beet (Beta
vulgaris subspecies vulgaris). This chapter traces the history of
beets from ancient times to the present day.
Beta vulgaris was
initially valued for its leaves and for the fleshy elongated leaf midribs
that characterize chard. Leaf beets, including chard, have been popular food
plants in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East since the start of
recorded history. Beet (silga) was mentioned in an Assyrian text as growing
in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world,
in around 800 BC. It was also referred to variously as selg, silq, silig,
seig or salk in Middle Eastern areas from ancient times. The ancient Greeks
and the Romans cultivated leaf beets for use as a potherb.
The Greeks presented beet as
one of their offerings to the sun god Apollo in the temple at Delphi. The
earliest Greek name for beet was teutlon or teutlion, probably because its
foliage was thought to resemble squid tentacles. The plant is mentioned in two
comedies (The Acharneans and Peace) by Aristophanes (around
444-385 BC), which were performed in Athens in about 420 BC. Aristotle
(384-322 BC), the first philosopher to attempt to classify the natural world,
described a red-coloured beet. His pupils Theophrastus (370-288 BC) and
Eudemus (350-290 BC) also left accounts of beet. Theophrastus described a
white or light-green kind called Sicula (after Sicily where it was first
grown) and a black or dark-green kind. Sicula or cicla has been used as a
taxonomic term for leaf beets (as opposed to beet roots) up to the present
day. Theophrastus described beet as being a garden plant with many uses. The
Greek physician Dioscorides also records two types of beet in the first
century AD. Eudemus was not so farsighted in identifying future leaf and root
beets, however, and he distinguishes four kinds: white, sessile, common, and
dark or swarthy. Roman and Arab writers noted a variety of different colours
in leaf beets, including pink and yellow coloured forms. The old varieties of
chard available today are identifiable in the descriptions of colourful
leaves and stems handed down in ancient texts. The Greeks ate the leaves of Beta
vulgaris and utilized them, and occasionally the roots, medicinally.
The Romans consumed leaf beets
in the same way as the Greeks, but they called the plant beta. Many Roman
writers mention betas, including Apicius, Cato, Cicero, Columella,
Dioscorides, Galen, Palladius and Pliny the Elder. The two main types of Beta
vulgaris known to the Romans were white and black, which correspond with
the two types described by Theophrastus. However, Roman descriptions of beet
put more emphasis on the roots than did Greek texts. The Romans were the
first people to become interested in the root of Beta vulgaris both as
a medicine and as a food. Roman black beet represents beetroot in an early
stage of development. Different types of Beta vulgaris would have
hybridized freely in Roman gardens, with the seed from plants producing
swollen roots being preferentially selected for future planting. The Romans
were therefore the first people to cultivate beetroot.
The Romans were primarily
interested in the roots of Beta vulgaris as a medicine. By the third
century AD, the first recipes for preparing the roots of Beta vulgaris
appear. The roots of both white beet and black beet were used medicinally.
Roman recipes for beetroot were mainly for curative broth, to treat fevers
and other ailments, but some were aimed at the epicureans of the day.
Recipes for both medicinal
broth and adventurous culinary dishes have been handed down in Apicius' The
Art of Cooking. The Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius lived in Tiberius
in the first century AD. However, the book that bears his name dates from the
late forth or early fifth centuries AD, because it was compiled by another
author, who confusingly also wrote under the name Apicius. He combined two
original texts by Apicius, on general recipes and on sauces, with a book on
agriculture and domestic science by Apuleius (second century AD) and material
from other sources. Apicius’s cookbook was edited and translated in 1958 by
Flowers and Rosenbaum, under the title The Roman Cookery Book.
In the third part of The Art
of Cooking, which is thought to have derived from Apuleius, there are
five different recipes for broth to be used as a laxative. Three of these
include beetroot. In one of these broth recipes, cleaned black beet roots
(negro betacios) are either cooked in mulsum (a honey and wine mixture) with
a little salt and oil, or boiled in water and oil with salt. The broth is
drunk, presumably warm. It is noted that the broth is even better if a
chicken has been cooked in the water first (i.e. chicken stock). Marcus
Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) is acknowledged as the source for this
description of beetroot broth, which occurs in later Roman versions of
Apicius. Varro was a noted scholar, the first librarian of the public library
in Rome, and was said to have written more than six hundred books on a wide
range of subjects, including an important work on agriculture. The laxative
recipes in Apicius are discussed further in Chapter Six. Varro's broth made
with stock is a precursor of beetroot soups such as borsch.
The first boiled beetroots were
probably the leftovers from the making of broth, but were then regarded as
food in their own right. In a recipe for boiled beets (Betas elixans), they
are said to be good to eat served with a dressing of mustard, a little oil,
and vinegar. This appears to be an early beetroot salad, comparable to the
modern beetroot salads described in Chapter Seven. While Flowers and
Rosenbaum, Giacosa, and other writers translate Betas in this recipe as
beetroot, however, others suggest that Apicius meant only beet leaves.
Unfortunately, the text is unclear in this regard, although I favour the
beetroot interpretation. Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), in his Natural
History, also suggested mustard dressing on beet, although again it may
be to beet leaves rather than beetroot that he is referring. The
oil/vinegar/mustard dressing, already used on beet leaves, may have been the
first dressing used on beetroot.
Apicius included beets in
recipes for soup, stew and stuffed sucking pig. In his barley soup, the
leaves of beets (betae) and other finely chopped greens are added to a soup
pot with legumes. Barley is used to thicken this soup, which is a forerunner
of minestrone. In turnover stew, small white beets (albas betas) are boiled
with leeks and various meats. Sucking pig stuffed with herbs is a recipe that
derives from Apicius the gourmet. The stuffing includes meat from chickens
and thrushes, snails, various sausages, stoned dates, flower bulbs, a wide
range of herbs including beets (betae), peppers, pine kernels, fifteen eggs
and liquamen sauce. The pig is sown up and smeared with wine, honey, oil,
herbs and spices, before being roasted in a large oven. In this recipe, both
the leaves and roots of beta may have been used.
It should be emphasised that
the roots of Beta vulgaris were not commonly eaten as food in Roman
times, while leaf beets were frequently part of a meal. However, the leaves
of Beta vulgaris had a reputation for being somewhat insipid. Martial
(Marcus Valerius Martialis, approximately AD 40-104), the writer of short
poems, reflected this in a description of the crops growing on an estate
outside Rome in one of his epigrams:
You could have seen there cabbages with noble heads
And leeks of either kind and lettuces like stools
And Beets that have some uses for a slow stomach.
Martial recommended a dressing of pepper and wine for beets.
Although Beta vulgaris
appears to have been widely prescribed for its medicinal value, not everyone
in the Roman world was convinced of its benefits. Pliny the Elder noted that
although beets were easily digested, there were doctors who claimed them more
harmful than cabbage. The influential physician Claudius Galen (AD 131-201)
and Oribasius, the court physician to Julian the Apostate (Flavius Claudius
Julianus, AD 332-363) were notable sceptics. Their view was that beetroot
needed boiling twice, unless you wished to suffer from flatulence and stomach
aches, that it was no more nutritious than any other plant of its kind, and
that it was ineffective as a laxative. However, beetroot is still valued for
some of the benefits extolled by the ancients, as we shall see in a later
chapter.
Anthenaeus, writing in the
third century AD, quotes Diphilus of Siphnos to the effect that the beet root
was good in taste and a better food than the cabbage. Anthimus writing in the
sixth century, within the same culinary tradition as Apicius, describes
beetroot as being suitable for both summer and winter use. This presumably
refers to both the leaves and roots in the summer, with the roots providing winter
sustenance. The Romans probably took white and black beets to various parts
of their empire, starting the spread of cultivated Beta vulgaris into
northern Europe and beyond.
Beet appears in the gardens of
Charlemagne (724-814), the ruler of an empire that included Gaul, Italy and
large parts of Spain and Germany. In a 'Regulation concerning landed
property' (Capitulare de villis), issued by Charlemagne around 812, Beta is
registered as a plant to be specifically cultivated in the grounds of the Imperial
estates. Beta vulgaris is well adapted to the cooler climate of
Northern Europe; cultivated forms generally grow best under cooler
conditions.
From Eastern Europe and the
Middle East, cultivated Beta vulgaris was carried on trade routes to
East Asia. Beets were consumed in Asia Minor in ancient times and in India by
classical times, and were known in China by AD 850. Sturtevant notes that
leaf beet (chard) is recorded in Chinese writing from the seventh, eighth,
fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Asia, as in Europe, Beta vulgaris
was originally cultivated for its leaves.
Leaf beet was a popular potherb from Roman times
to the sixteenth century, although beetroot was much less frequently consumed
as a foodstuff during this time. Beta vulgaris was grown for its roots
throughout the Middle Ages, when it was usually referred to as Roman beet,
particularly in monastery gardens in France, Spain and Italy. Medieval
herbalists and gastronomes consumed beetroot and advocated its benefits.
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) wrote down
details for preparing beetroot. Hildegard is nowadays mainly revered for her
sublime sacred music, but she was also an abbess, a healer with a good
understanding of herbs, a writer, and something of a visionary. In her book Naturkunde,
translated into modern German by Peter Riethe, she describes a white beet
that needs to be peeled (therefore, a root). This is said to be more
beneficial cooked than raw. Many of Hildegard's ideas were radical in her
time, so her descriptions of beet root do not imply that it was widely
consumed in the twelfth century. She also specified the roots of white beet,
which has often been used medicinally but has rarely been eaten as food.
Another key herbalist of the period, Albertus Magnus (c. 1200-1280) mentions
a chard-like leaf beet, but not the roots of Beta vulgaris, in his
observations on plants in the thirteenth century.
In contrast to beetroot, leaf beets gained in
popularity during the Middle Ages. From the old Roman Empire, they flourished
in cultivation throughout the Arab world. The Portuguese adopted the Arabic
for beet (selg) as acelga or selga. Leaf beet was known as acelga by the
thirteenth century throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Leaf beet, especially
chard, is known today as acelga in Portuguese and Spanish.
Beet roots were long, thin and roughly
turnip-shaped in the Middle Ages, rather than the swollen and succulent roots
we know today. There is little written proof for the existence of fleshy
roots in Beta vulgaris before the sixteenth century. After the Roman
era, in fact, there is little mention of beetroot in manuscripts until the
fourteenth century. Then the word Bete occurs in an English recipe of 1390.
Barbarus (d. 1493) mentions a single, long, straight, fleshy, sweet root of
beet that was good to eat. This description was reiterated by Ruellius
writing in France in 1536 and Fuchsius in 1542. In his plant guide of 1919,
Sturtevant notes how Fuchsius amends the description of Barbarus to include
several branches and small fibres on the roots.
The fifteenth century Italian physician and
gourmand Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi), who has been described as the Dr.
Atkins of his day, wrote his influential volume De Honesta Voluptate et
Valitudine Vulgare (On Right Pleasure and Good Health) in 1460. This has
been credited as the first modern cookbook, which sets out the basis for modern
Italian cuisine and the ‘Mediterranean diet’. Platina included recipes for
white chard, and a recipe for green sauce that includes leaf beet, parsley
and wheat to thicken. He describes how beetroot, roasted in a coal fire,
helps to sweeten the breath when it is eaten with garlic.
By the end of the fifteenth century, different
cultivated forms of Beta vulgaris would have been found throughout
Europe. In contrast to the Romans, who primarily took the root medicinally,
from the sixteenth century onwards people consumed beetroot mainly as a
vegetable. New beetroot varieties were developed that were suited to the
table. From the 1530s onwards, detailed descriptions of beet roots start to
appear. Caesalpinus distinguishes four types of beet in his book De
Plantis of 1538, one of which had red roots. Matthiolus describes a new
beet (Beta rubra) in Germany in 1558, which had red turnip-like roots
that were good to eat. This beet was said to be quite distinct from the white
and black beets commonly grown in Italian gardens of the time. These were
among the first descriptions that specifically commented on the redness of
the root. Pena and Lobel in 1570 also describe the new red beet, as related
by Sturtevant, but they also note its rarity. Lobel illustrated the new beet
in 1576 and emphasized its improved form, with the root being swollen at the
shoulder.
The Italians developed different types of
beetroot during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A number of these
early beetroot types were introduced into northern Europe from Italy by the
sixteenth century. Camerarius describes a shorter and thicker form from Italy
in 1586, for example, which might represent a prototype for cylindrical or
half-long shaped roots. Daleschamp also records this type in 1587, in his Historia
Generalis Plantarum. In addition, Daleschamp describes an important new
improved long-rooted type known as Roman Beet (Beta romana). It is
generally recognized as the prototype of modern beetroot, giving rise to both
long turnip-rooted and stout globular-rooted varieties. Roman Beet was the
first improved beetroot variety with a distinctly swollen root, for which there
is good documentation. The name Roman Beet suggests that it originated in
Italy. Its first recorded appearance, however, was in Germany in about 1558,
followed by a description in England in 1576.
New beetroot types were enthusiastically
cultivated in Germany, where gardeners played a key role in developing it
from the late Middle Ages onwards and promoting it as a food. From Germany,
beetroot's popularity as a root vegetable spread eastwards to Poland,
Lithuania, Russia and the Ukraine, and northwards to Scandinavia. Beetroot
started to become an important vegetable in Central and Eastern Europe by the
end of the Middle Ages. It continues to be a staple today in this region,
especially in rural areas. Its first use in Ukrainian and Slavic cookery is noted
in cookery books dating from between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Borscht, the classic beetroot soup from Poland, Russia and the Ukraine,
originates from this time, as do other beetroot dishes such as Scandinavian
herring and beetroot salad. Large long-rooted beetroots would have been
harvested in the autumn for consumption during the winter.
In France, Ruellius described a new type of
beetroot or betterave in 1536. This may be Roman Beet, which was known in
French gardens by 1631, according to Sturtevant, growing under the name Beta
rubra pastinaca. The French agronomist Olivier de Serres describes a type
of beetroot in his Théâtre d'Agriculture of 1629 as, 'a kind of
parsnip which has arrived recently from Italy'. He records that it has a very
red and rather fat root, with thick leaves, and all of it is good to eat. He
especially recommends the root as a choice food and notes that the juice it
yields is like a sugar syrup, which is very beautiful on account of its
vermilion colour. The cultivation of beetroot was described in the popular
gardening book Le Jardinier Solitaire in 1612. Beet roots have been
fed to cattle in France from the early 1600s onwards. Rouge Crapaudine or
Crapaudine, one of the oldest known table beet varieties, was first
cultivated in France. Its long roots have a distinctive black or dark purple,
pock-marked and rough skin. La Varenne, who is credited with inventing the
system used in modern French cookery, described the preparation of beetroot
in his book La Cuisine Français in 1651. In his recipe, pre-cooked
beets are peeled, cut into rounds, and fried in butter with a chopped onion
and a dash of vinegar.
Roman Beet reached England in the late sixteenth
century. John Gerard in his Herball or The Historie of Plants, first
published in England in 1597, notes the distinction between white beet (Beta
alba) and red beet (Beta rubra) and provides an early description
of Roman Beet. All cultivated forms of Beta vulgaris were called beet
in Gerard's day. Up until the Elizabethan era in England, white beet was the
only type of cultivated Beta vulgaris commonly grown.
John Gerard (1545-1612) was the superintendent of
Lord Burleigh's garden in central London, amongst other things. His views on
plants were highly respected and Queen Elizabeth I was said to have had a
high opinion of him. It was also said that Shakespeare, who lived around the
corner from Lord Burleigh’s garden for a number of years, might have been
inspired by the plants in it when writing his early plays. Gerard’s
Herball was updated in 1633 by Thomas Johnson.
In the Herball, Gerard describes the
common white beet as having great broad leaves and large, thick and hard
roots. It is clear from his description that the white roots of this plant
were not consumed as food. Gerard described the cooking of leaves of white
beet, 'a cold and moist pot-herbe', which 'quickly descendeth' or wilts when
boiled. He concludes that it 'nouristheth little or nothing'.
Gerard explains how a merchant, Nicholas Lete of
London, gave him a novel type of red beet from a place beyond the seas,
although that place is not named. He grew it in his garden in 1596. Gerard
describes this red beet, 'which hath leaves very great, and red of colour, as
is all the rest of the plant, as well as root, as stalke, and floures full of
a perfect purple juyce tending to redness: the middle rib of which leaves are
for the most part very broad and thicke, like the middle part of the cabbage
leafe, which is equall in goodness with the leaves of the cabbage being
boyled'. He suggests that the greens of this red beet 'may be used in winter
for a sallad herbe, with vinegre, oyle and salt, and is not only pleasant to
the taste, but also delightful to the eye'. Gerard then refers to the greater
red Beet or Roman Beet, which he regards as distinct from the novel red beet
just described.
On Roman Beet, Gerard writes that, 'boyled and
eaten with oyle, vinegre and pepper, is a most excellent and delicat sallad:
but what might be made of the red and beautifull root (which is preferred
before the leaves, as well as beautie as in goodness) I refer unto the
curious and cunning cooke, who no doubt when hee had the view thereof, and is
assured that it is both good and wholesome, will make thereof many and divers
dishes, both faire and good'. Gerard therefore recognized the potential of
beetroot as a vegetable.
One detail of Gerard's description of his novel
red beet or chard (which he saw as distinct from Roman beet) has sown much
confusion. He describes the plant that he grew from material the merchant
gave him and records that it grew to eight cubits in height. Some
commentators have taken this to be the height of the green tops, which is a
very improbable height. However, it refers to the height of the long flower
spike put out at the end of beetroot’s second year of growth, on which the
seeds form. This is undoubtedly a very long flower spike. A cubit is around
45 cm and so Gerard’s flower spike is 360 cm or 12 feet in height. Beta
vulgaris flower spikes can easily reach 120 cm or 4 feet in height.
However, 360 cm or 12 feet is an exceptionally tall flower spike. Some
writers have wondered if the spike was measured correctly or whether Gerard
was exaggerating. Even in its day, Gerard's Herball was known to be
error-ridden, and we should take his description with a pinch of salt. It is
probable, however, that his novel red beet bolted and set seed prematurely.
Its roots are depicted as being long and thin in an illustration in the Herball.
Gerard gave some of the seeds of the novel beet to his friend John Norden and
kept some himself. They both found that, although the original plant was only
red, the seeds produced plants of 'many and varied colours'. This variation
is till typical of unimproved coloured chard today.
John Parkinson (1567-1650), who knew Gerard,
sheds more light on varieties of beet in A Garden of Pleasant Flowers:
Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629), probably the most famous
English gardening tome of the seventeenth century. Incidentally, the title
contains a pun of the author’s name (Park in Sun). Parkinson was apothecary
to King James I and later the first royal botanist to Charles I. He notes a
number of varieties of beet in England by 1629: 'some white, some green, some
yellow and some red. The leaves of some are of use only, and the root not
used, others the root is only used and not the leaves'.
The common white beet was the most common type
known in England up until this time. It is the same white beet known to the
Greeks and Romans, which was originally found in Sicily. Only the leaves are
eaten as food. Parkinson describes it as having many great leaves next to the
ground, of a whitish-green colour. The flower stalk of this chard is great,
strong, ribbed and crested, bearing leaves and flowers. The flowers are small
pale green and give prickly seeds. Parkinson describes the root as being,
'great, long and hard', and being of no use at all.
Parkinson describes a green beet, in addition to white
and red beet. This is said to be like white beet, but with a darker green
colour. John Tradescant found it on the salt marshes near Rochester. There is
a possibility that this could be a form of wild sea beet, which is known to
grow in maritime marshes in parts of England.
Parkinson differentiates between the common or
small red Beet and the larger Roman red Beet. He suggests that the small red
beet is a direct descendent of the black beet known to the Romans. The small
red beet is used for its leaves and not its roots. Parkinson describes that
it, 'differeth not from the white Beete, but only that it is not so great,
and both the leaves and roots are somewhat red'. The leaves of some plants
are redder than others. Some plants only have red leaf veins, while others
have dark red leaves. Parkinson concludes his description of common red Beete
by noting, 'The roote hereof is red, spongy, and not used to bee eaten'. The
common red beet is therefore a chard that differs from the white variety
mainly in colour.
The Roman Beet is used for both its leaves and
roots. Parkinson's account makes it clear that it is the first beetroot to be
utilized in England. Romane red Beete is, ?the most excellent Beete of all
others: his rootes bee as great as the greatest carrot, exceeding red both
within and without, very sweet and good, fit to be eaten'. Parkinson
describes how this beet grows higher than common red Beet, while the leaves
have a better taste. The roots of Roman Beet are said to sometimes be short
like a turnip and sometimes long like a carrot. The seed is said to be like
that of small red Beet.
Another variety of beet decribed by Parkinson is
Italian Beete, but this classification seems to have been erected mainly to
encompass the, 'great red Beete that master Lete a merchant of London gave Master
Gerard'. He repeats Gerard’s description of the great leaves and makes no
mention of the roots.
Parkinson describes how the leaves of all the
types of beet described can be put into the pot among other herbs to make
pottage. They can also be boiled whole and served with meats, which he notes
is popular in France and England. He notes the roots of the common red Beet
are used by some adventurous cooks, but are not usually eaten. However, the
roots of Roman Beet appear to be a new fashion in 1629, 'the Romane red Beete
is of much use among cookes and is grown of late dayes into a great cuftome'.
Cooks used them to garnish dishes of meat and fish and may have used it to
colour dishes also. He describes how, 'rootes of the Romane red Beete being
boyled, are eaten while hot with a little oyle and vinegar'. It is accounted
a delicate salad for the winter, which can also be eaten cold.
In his celebrated Herbal, Nicolas Culpeper
(1616-1654) adds little to the descriptions of beet made by Gerard and
Parkinson, but he does compiles an extensive list of medicinal uses of chard
and beetroot. In The English Physician, or Herball (1653), Culpeper
notes that White Beet and Red Beet are the two best known sorts of beet. For
White and Red Beet, Culpeper repeats the descriptions found in Parkinson. He
does not mention Roman red Beet, but as a doctor he was interested in readily
available herbal remedies rather than food plants. The medical uses of beet
described by Culpeper are considered in Chapter Six. Incidentally, medical
herbals from Germany from this time had started linking plants and astrology.
Culpeper followed this practice, becoming a trained astrologer. In his Herball,
white beets are considered to be under the influence of Saturn, while red
beets are under Jupiter.
While Roman red Beet appears to have been newly
fashionable when Parkinson wrote his famous book, by the time Robert May
wrote The Accomplisht Cook in 1660 it appears to have become an
established vegetable in England. John Evelyn in his book Acetaria of
1699 writes that cold slices of boiled beetroot make a 'grateful winter
sallet' eaten with oil and vinegar. He adds that the French and Italians had
contrived beetroot into curious figures to adorn their salads.
Jane Grigson notes that around 1760 the word
vegetable starts to be used in its modern sense, as a herb or root grown for
food. Vegetables at this time were no longer mainly seen as medicinal herbs
or the preserve of herbalists, but as pleasurable food in their own right.
However, the idea that vegetables are good for us has persisted to the
present day, with sound reason. Beetroot became one of the plants listed for
vegetable growers in what evolved into the seed catalogue. Lovell had listed
Red Roman Beet in 1665, although in 1726 it was still the only type of
beetroot listed in England by Townsend the seedsman. However, Sturtevant
notes that Mawe and Bryant both listed a second type, Long Red, in 1778 and
1783, respectively. This variety is also referred to as called common Long
Red and was described by Vilmorin in 1885 as Long Blood Red.
Back in Italy, gardeners were cultivating
distinct varieties of beetroot. Bassano was found in all Italian markets by
1841. Vilmorin described it in 1885. It has a prototypical cylindrical or
flat-bottomed red root and it may be the prototypic cylindrical beetroot
described by Camerarius and Daleschamp in the late sixteenth century.
Cylindrical beetroot are also referred to as intermediate because they are
believed to have been a halfway stage between the original long-rooted
beetroot and modern globe-rooted varieties. Bassano was named after a town in
the Venetian Alps. Incidentally, the town of Bassano is also famous for its
asparagus, which has been grown there since the sixteenth century. Another
early Italian variety of beetroot is Barabietola di Chioggia, which was first
grown in market gardens around Venice around the sixteenth century. This
variety has a distinctive red and white circular bullseye pattern. The town
of Chioggia is situated at the southern end of the Venetian lagoon and is a
major fishing port on the Adriatic. Beetroot was cultivated here many centuries
ago, in sight of the sea, under conditions similar to those where its wild
ancestor is still found.
Beetroot varieties were also developed in other
European countries. The white-fleshed Blankoma, for example, was an early
Dutch introduction. Dutch plant breeders have subsequently produced many new
beetroot varieties, including Bikores, Libero and the recent hybrid Pablo.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
uncontrolled hybridization between leaf beets, chards and early long-rooted
beetroot produced a wide variety of forms. Beta vulgaris is primarily
outcrossing and reproduction is by cross-fertilization rather than
self-fertilization. This favoured a wave of hybridization, providing the raw
material from which modern beetroot varieties have arisen. Roman Beet and
possibly other early long-rooted types became variable in leaf and root
morphology due to hybridization with leaf beets, chards and other beetroot.
Root shapes other than long appeared and where selected for in gardens. By
the nineteenth century, a wide range of cylindrical, flat and globular
varieties were introduced to growers, particularly in Northern Europe.
Cylindrical forms are also called intermediate, because their root shape is
midway between long-rooted and globular.
In comparison to beetroot, leaf beets have been
relatively unchanged since ancient times. The word chard derives from the
Latin and French words for thistle (chardon, charde), an unrelated plant to Beta
vulgaris. The French writer Bauhin describes, in 1596, dark (black),
white, red and yellow chards, along with chard having a particularly broad
stalk, and wild sea beet. His chards were very similar to coloured chards
described by writers in the ancient world. From the start of the 1800s,
however, plant breeders started to produce a range of improved chard
varieties. These types became more compact in appearance through selective
breeding.
Although initially adopted to describe
broad-stemmed leaf beet, chard gradually became a generic term used to
describe the succulent stalks or leaf petioles of globe artichoke, cardoon
and other vegetables. The term Swiss chard derives from nineteenth century
seed catalogues. The Swiss pre-fix was used to distinguish Beta vulgaris
with broad leaf petioles from other plants labelled generically as chard. It
is unclear why chards were considered to be Swiss, although some commentators
suggest that it was the Dutch who were responsible.
In 1885, Vilmorin describes White, Swiss, Curled
Swiss, Silver and Chilean varieties of chard. These are described as being
vegetables for the table and as garden ornamentals. Silver or silver-leaf
chard (Poiree blonde a carde blanche Vilmorin 1883) is described as a light
green form of Swiss chard, with shorter and much broader leaf stalks. Chilean
chard is a form usually grown for ornamental purposes. They have very broad
leaf stalks that are often twisted. The leaves can be puckered like a Savoy
cabbage, as also occurs in Curled Swiss chard. Ornamental Chilean chard was
probably introduced in Belgium in the early to mid nineteenth century.
Only one variety of beetroot was listed in the
USA prior to 1806, a long-rooted red beet in McMahon's seed catalogue.
However, Sturtevant noted that, in 1826, Thorbum had listed four varieties in
the USA: Long Red, Bassano, Egyptian or Flat Egyptian and Detroit. The Long
Red appears to be the same variety recorded in England since 1778. Bassano
was imported from Italy, where it was commonly grown over a hundred years
previously. Flat Egyptian is an American production, although it may be
derived from material originally imported from Egypt and the Middle East. It
was first grown around Boston in about 1869. Detroit is another American-bred
variety, which was introduced in 1897 and is still widely grown today. Detroit
can be used as a winter crop, or harvested young as a summer crop. When
Detroit arrived in Britain and several other European countries by 1900 it
helped to establish the trend toward small-rooted beetroot being grown as a
summer crop for salads.
Improved beetroot varieties were relatively slow
in reaching Britain. Only two kinds, Red Roman and Long Red, were available
from English seed merchants prior to 1800. In the seventeenth century
beetroot was viewed as a sweet novelty food. A recipe for crimson biscuits of
red beetroot survives from the eighteenth century. The British really took to
beetroot, however, in the Victorian era, when it became popular as a salad
vegetable. The juice of beetroot was also used as a hair rinse and a dye for
fabric. A nineteenth century English vegetable garden has been reinstated at
The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, England. The gardens of the Heligan
estate went into decline during after the First World War, but were restored
from a condition of extreme neglect during the 1990s. The productive garden
has been lovingly restored with vegetable varieties that would have been
grown in the estate’s heyday. The main beetroot varieties (all pre-1880)
cultivated are the long-rooted Cheltenham Green Top, the French variety Crapaudine,
the tapering cylindrical-rooted Cylindra, the early American varieties
Detroit Globe and Burpee’s Golden, and the Italian variety Chioggia.
Up until the twentieth century beetroot has
primarily been grown as a winter root vegetable. Large-rooted maincrop
beetroot, including tapered and globe varieties, give heavy yields and can be
lifted late in the season for use during the winter months. Large-rooted
maincrop beetroot has been eaten as a staple for many years in Central and
Eastern Europe. However, during the late twentieth century, beetroot has
increasingly been regarded as a summer crop. Smaller-rooted varieties have
been bred and cultivated primarily as a salad vegetable. Smaller globe-shaped
beetroot have become predominate in many areas as a summer crop, because they
mature early, grow rapidly and produce good yields.
Beetroot varieties exist that are early, medium
and late maturing. Therefore, beetroot can now be grown for most of the year.
With the popularity of summer beetroot increasing after the Second World War,
however, a large proportion of the crop was boiled and pickled. This made
beetroot become practically synonymous with beetroot pickled in malt vinegar,
especially in Western Europe between the 1950s and the 1970s. Thankfully, this
is now changing, and later in the book we will see how the culinary uses of
beetroot are now more diverse than ever before.
All parts of Beta vulgaris have almost
certainly been fed to livestock since at least Roman times. Beetroot was the
first cultivated type of Beta vulgaris to be selected for its swollen
roots. There was no distinguishable fodder beet or sugar beet until the
eighteenth century and, therefore, all swollen-rooted Beta vulgaris
before this time are considered as beetroot or beet. The tops and roots of
beetroot have mainly been grown for fodder in recent centuries in France,
Germany and several other countries. In countries with cooler climates, large
white-fleshed varieties have been preferentially chosen for storage for fodder
during the winter. The breeding of selected lines of Beta vulgaris
especially to feed to cattle and other animals, however, started in
relatively recent times.
The Abbé de Commerell wrote the first known
description of beet being grown and specifically fed to cattle in 1787. He
referred to mangel (Runkelrübe) being used as fodder beet in the Rhineland in
the 1750s. Mangel derives from a yellow type of beet with good winter storage
properties. This large winter beet soon became cultivated around Europe as a
fodder beet. Mangel wurzel was also being cultivated in North American by
1806.
Mangel or mangel-wurzel probably first originated
through a cross between a yellow-rooted beetroot and a leaf beet. Vilmorin
describes at least sixteen kinds of mangel in the late nineteenth century.
Mangels are regarded as too coarse in texture for human consumption. The
roots, and also the leaves, however, provide a nutritious food for cattle,
which can be produced abundantly and relatively cheaply. Fodder beet is generally
preferred to carrot and turnip for livestock. Recent crosses between mangel
with sugar beet have produced modern fodder beet cultivars.
In commercial terms, sugar beet is the most
important cultivated form of Beta vulgaris. It was recognized in the
sixteenth century that a sweet syrup could be extracted from the swollen
roots of beet. From the mid-eighteenth century, beetroot with large roots and
white flesh were being grown in the German regions of Magdeburg and Halberstadt,
and in Silesia. These beetroot had been selected for their sweetness and
large size. The Russian chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (1709-1782)
discovered that crystals from syrup extracted from Silesian beet were
identical to crystals obtained from sugar cane. In both cases, the sugar
crystals were pure sucrose. Marggraf was an eminent scientist and the
President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He presented his results to the
Academy in 1747 and the proceedings of this meeting were translated into French
two years later. The amount of sugar obtained by Marggraf from beet was
relatively low, however, and at the time it did not seem worth extracting
commercially.
Marggraf's student, Franz Carl Achard
(1753-1821), was the first person to select and process beets specifically to
produce sugar. In a garden in Kaulsdorf, a village near Berlin, he grew
different types of beet to determine which would be the best to develop for
sugar extraction. He compared a range of beets that were used to feed
livestock in southern Germany and found that conical-shaped roots, with white
skins and white flesh, yielded the highest amounts of sugar. He also showed
that soil type, growing conditions and cultivation methods influenced the
root’s sugar content. Initially Achard found great variability in the plants
produced from selected seed, but after a few years he obtained a line that
consistently produced higher levels of sugar than previously recorded. This
selected line was called White Silesian Beet and it is the ancestor of all
modern sugar beet cultivars.
Achard presented the King of Prussia, Frederick
William III, with a sugarloaf made from beet in 1799 and requested the
funding necessary to start large-scale sugar production. In 1801, the King
gave Achard the money to purchase an estate in Cunern in Lower Silesia. The
first sugar beet processing factory was set up there in 1802. Despite
technical difficulties and delays, Achard obtained levels of sugar (around 4
to 6% in fresh roots) that were sufficient to attract commercial interest.
This launched sugar beet as a commercial crop.
A friend and neighbour of Achard, Moritz Baron
von Koppy, built a much larger sugar beet processing factory at Krayn, near
Cunern, in 1805. Koppy established cultivation methods for sugar beet,
improved the efficiency of its processing, and found uses for the by-products
of processing. The tops, beet pulp and molasses were fed to animals, for
instance, while the dried pulp made a coffee substitute and alcohol obtained
from the molasses was used to make vinegar. Achard summarized the knowledge
gained by himself and Koppy in a widely-read book.
Sugar beet is therefore a relatively recent crop.
At the start of the nineteenth century, all Europe's sugar was obtained from
sugar cane grown on plantations in the Americas. The slave revolts in the
plantations of Santa Domingo in the 1790s, however, were the first sign that
supplies of imported cane sugar could not always be relied upon. The flow of
sugar could be disrupted, while a sense of unease in was starting to develop
in parts of Europe about a system that relied on slavery.
The sugar beet industry in Europe effectively
started in France and Belgium in 1811, at the instigation of Napoleon
Bonaparte. His economic plan for continental Europe, in the first decade of
the seventeenth century, placed an emphasis on developments that reduced
imports of goods supplied by British colonial trade, including sugar cane.
Napoleon's army was occupying Silesia in around 1810 and he fully exploited
the advances being made there in sugar beet production. A French Commission
had confirmed Achard’s findings and presented Napoleon with loaves of beet
sugar in January 1811. Later that year, Napoleon instigated a policy that
rapidly increased beet sugar production in France and in countries under
French control. In 1811, around forty small beet factories, mainly in France
and Germany, were established. This indigenous source of sugar soon became of
strategic importance to Napoleon, because English naval blockades stopped
imports of cane sugar from the West Indies reaching France during the
Napoleonic Wars.
After the decline of the Napoleonic Empire, from
1813 onwards, the rapid spread of sugar beet cultivation was stopped, and
cane imports were resumed. However, sugar beet cultivation, albeit over much
smaller areas, continued in France and Germany. The French experimented with
different lines of beet derived from Achard's original selections. By 1824,
five types of beet selected for sugar production were described (grosse
rouge, petite rouge, rouge ronde, jaune and blanche). A distinction was made
during the 1830s between types of forage or fodder beets (Runkelrübe) and
types of sugar beet (Zucherrübe)
The plant breeder Louis de Vilmorin (1816-1860)
discovered that sugar beet root extracts of high density yielded more sugar,
enabling him to devise a method using specific gravity to quantify sugar
content in comparison with solutions of known sugar concentration. In 1852,
this technique was modified into the silver ingot method, which became a
standard for measuring the sugar content of beet juice. The polarimeter - a
device to measure the optical properties of liquids - was also invented
around this time; the amount of sugar in beet juice being quantified using
the Ventzke scale, named after the its inventor. Vilmorin and other plant
breeders were able to make rapid progress in improving sugar beet through
continuous selection using these new techniques. From the 1830s, beet sugar
production again increased in France and Germany. By the 1870s, numerous beet
factories had been established throughout central and eastern Europe.
Sugar beet has been cultivated continuously in
Germany since the time of Achard. Systematic plant breeding soon led to the
production of improved varieties in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. A new variety called Imperial was produced in around 1860 near
Halle, for instance, which had a uniform appearance and a relatively high
sugar content (11-13%). By 1880, breeding programs in France and Germany had
resulted in sugar beet with up to 18-20% sugar per fresh weight of root. This
is an acceptable level of sugar by today's standards. Around the 1880s,
however, the aims of plant breeders diverged. Raising sugar yield ceased to
be the only goal for sugar beet improvement. The different types of sugar
beet that were subsequently produced will be considered in the following
chapter.
Sugar beet cultivation started in the USA in the
1830s, when German and French immigrants arrived bringing the necessary
technology with them. By the 1890s, sugar beet processing facilities had been
established in California, Nebraska, Utah and Colorado. A large expansion US
beet sugar occurred in 1900. By the 1990s, around 8% of the world's total
sugar beet crop was grown in the USA. However, this area is now declining,
due to the increased importance of corn syrup and sweeteners obtained from
maize.
Sugar beet production started later in other
European countries. In England, for example, the first sugar beet was
cultivated in 1920s, although it is now a major crop that is focused on
Suffolk. Today, sugar beet is grown throughout Europe and in North America.
In 1900, more of the world's sugar (sucrose) was
produced by beet (63%) than from cane. However, this peak in the proportion
of sugar produced by beet was followed by a relative decline due to an
international agreement in 1901 that stopped import taxes being levied on
cane sugar. Today, around two-fifths of the world's sugar is produced from
sugar beet. Sugar beet still has an advantage over sugar cane, in that it
grows in temperate regions where consumption of sugar is highest. Indeed,
sugar consumption in industrial counties skyrocketed in the late twentieth
century. This has been one factor in the dramatic increase in rates of
obesity observed, especially in North America.
The
rise of alternative sweeteners, a public health backlash against excessive
sugar in foodstuffs, and a surplus of sugar beet in the expanded European
Union of 2004 are among the factors that have placed sugar beet cultivation
at a crossroads. However, new and diversified markets should ensure that it
continues to be an economically important crop well into the future. Brazil first
grew sugar beet for ethanol production (gasohol) in 1979. Its use to make
biofuel and other industrial products is set to increase.
Sugar
beet was one of the first crops to be genetically modified. Biotechnology is
being utilized to produce a range of novel sugars and proteins in sugar beet.
The future prospects for modifying Beta vulgaris will be examined
further in Chapter Four. Beetroot, meanwhile, continues to enjoy a revival as
a healthy, wholesome and no-nonsense vegetable. In later chapters, its health
benefits and culinary versatility will be explored. Its future looks rosy.
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