By Joel Denker
The asparagus shoots break through the soil, offering up an early hint of spring. The delicate vegetable, a member of the lily family that includes onions, leeks, and other plants, evokes a seasonal joy. It also summons up feelings of disgust.
The Romans were passionate about asparagus. They plucked shoots from the wild and, over time, domesticated the plant. The once thin and fragile stalks became fatter and thicker. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, was revolted on seeing a grotesquely plump variety. “Now we see artificial kinds, and at Ravenna, three stalks weigh a pound,” he wrote. “What monstrous gluttony.” Pliny preferred a pristine asparagus. “Nature made asparagus grow wild.”
Special care was taken in cultivating it. Cato, the Roman agriculturist, published detailed instructions on planting an asparagus bed. Rituals were followed to ensure a plentiful and tasty harvest. A ram’s horn buried in the soil was considered a lucky charm.
The Romans ate asparagus with zest. They savored briny spears from stalks that had been steeped in a salt and vinegar solution. Young sprouts were delicious in a salad. A simple and enjoyable way of eating them, the author Columnella reported, was flavored with salt, pepper, and butter and dressed with the juice of citron, an ancestor of the lemon.
The appeal of asparagus was more than culinary to the ancients. Its value as a laxative and diuretic, Pliny emphasized, made the vegetable “among the most useful foods.” Asparagus, especially the water it was cooked in, he added, made a good aphrodisiac.
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To learn more about asparagus, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
