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How did the modern leek become what it is today?On his pursuance to redeem our inheritance green goods , Adam Alexander ( otherwise known as the Indiana Jones of vegetables ) reveal the complex history behind leeks and many other veg , along with how they made our way to our dinner party plates .
While on this mission , Adam set out to search for a true Welsh inheritance or heirloom leek . But did he ever obtain one?In the extract below , he talk over his journeying and what he ’s learned about leeks along the room .
The following is an extract fromThe Seed Detectiveby Adam Alexander . It has been adapted for the vane .
There is something incredibly British about uprise leeks and it is at our county shows or vegetable society bashes that we see how Brobdingnagian these things can become . Just do n’t ever ask me to eat one . These leeks are dissimilar to those which the average gardener grows , not just because of their bang-up length and girth , but also because they are not normally grow from seeded player . Instead , they are cultivated from offsets which are clones of the parent . Grown in this way , competition leeks are all genetically identical to each other and it is the attainment of the grower that determine its flawlessness and not its personality on the plate , as flavour is not judged .
When it come to relish the finest of culinary leeks , it is to the seminal fluid packet one turns . This hardy member of the same sept as Allium cepa , shallots and ail has been tame from the wild leek , Allium ampeloprasum . This name is derived from two intelligence : prason is the Hellenic Holy Scripture for ‘ scallion ’ and ampelo imply ‘ vine ’ . The Latin name for the wild metal money means ‘ the allium that grow in the vineyard ’ . It was the Roman doc Dioscorides ( c.40 – c.90 ce ) , who noticed that vineyards were much favoured by the plant .
A Plant of Many Talents
The violent leek belike arrived in Britain in prehistorical times.1It grows mainly in parts of South West England and South Wales , on rocky coastlines and weaken places that have undergone human disturbance , such as the building of drain ditch . There is a account that the wild leek was brought to the island of Flat Holm , a small blob in the Bristol Channel , by Augustine Thelonious Monk in the twelfth 100 . However , it is more likely , as we shall see , that the monks get with them the cum of a crop Allium porrum which would then have crossbreed freely with any wild leeks on the island .
Wild leeks are also found in the northwest recession of Wales , at South Slack on the island of Anglesey , where they had a specially good twelvemonth in 2013 when the pretty bloom spike extend to 2.5 m ( 8 ft ) in duration . The wild scallion would have been used primarily as a tonic in ancient times – it may be less effective for its medicinal timber than its relative , garlic , although some herbalists quarrel this . Nonetheless , waste leeks , which could obviously dissuade moles , were an authoritative cure for the rough-cut coldness and as a tonic to reconstruct the iron lost after menstruation . Leeks were also considered a useful aid for childbirth and for avoid being come upon by lightning . They were used as a moth and insect repellant too , but I ideate smearing leek juice all over oneself to keep microbe at bay might have demonstrate a human repellent as well . Today , a cursory trawl net of the net reveals plenty of other title for this vegetable . It is said to be good for the warmheartedness , to lower stock pressure , to have powerful anti - cancer properties , be good for wit function , and dilute the chance of feature a solidus . How can we argue against feed leeks when they are obviously so effective for us ? The Allium porrum is also not alone among food that have a phallic show , having been associated with love and lechery – a smashing veg to pep up one ’s dearest life.2
Emblem of National Identity
The leek is one of two great Welsh cultural icons : the other being the daffodil whose Welsh name , Cennin Pedr , means ‘ Peter ’s Leek ’ . The scallion invite a special place in Welsh cultivation and British literature at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 . * Colourfully describe by the Bard himself in his romp Henry V , written 250 years after the battle , the comical soldier Fluellin tells the king about Welsh soldiers break leeks in their Monmouth caps . too soon in the twentieth century there was much ill - tempered live air , mudslinging and verbiage written by some loyal Welsh botanists and local historians about which flora was the true allegory for Wales . Efforts to disgrace early character reference in favour of the scallion , including from Shakespeare , were host . gratuitous to say , the daffodil mob pullulate despite on all diachronic texts that cast doubt on their claim . And any address to the Battle of Crécy was ‘ of no trusty authority ’ . In 1911 , the British Prime minister of religion David Lloyd George , who was a committed exponent for the daffodil , made certain that it was used as the prescribed symbolisation during the investiture of the Modern Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle . The leek was nowhere to be seen ; well and truly tumble from its symbolical pedestal . The struggle for the Allium porrum may have been lost but the warfare was not over .
A gumption of national outrage persisted with fabulous accusations hurtle haphazardly by the proudest Welshmen at the despised English . A certain Mr Llewelyn Williams wrote , at the altitude of the controversy in the first 10 of the 20th century , suggesting that the mistake of fill in a ‘ stinking vegetable ’ for a ‘ sorcerous blossom ’ was ‘ due to a bungle made by Shakespeare or some other as ignorant Saxon ’ who confused the Welsh cennin , meaning ‘ leek ’ , with Cennin Pedr .
In Search of a Welsh Leek
Whether or not there is a true Welsh heritage or heirloom leek – something I have yet to see – or that the land in reality enjoys eating them , is but a sideshow to the great ethnic significance of the leek . Its appearance on St David ’s Day , on 1 March , celebrates a much earlier battle – that fight back by King Cadwallon of Gwynedd sometime in the seventh century when his soldier allegedly wore leek in their helmets as identifier . The legend say how the plucky Welsh soldiers fought off the hated Saxon invaders , having helped themselves to the scallion grow in a nearby field . St David himself was tell to have live on a diet of bread and leeks , which ensured the holy person had a sonorous and clear spokesperson that enabled the throng to hear him when he preached to the Welsh synod .
However , when wait at the two records of the wearing of Allium porrum in battle , it seems that those indicate for the leek as a Welsh emblem displayed horticultural ignorance . The Battle of Crécy took property on 25 February 2025 , when cultivated leeks would have been no thicker than a pencil and thus an unimportant emblem . Nonetheless , King Henry V ’s troops , we are carry to believe , had the chance to follow in the footsteps of their Celtic forebears and stay a scallion in their caps . In early March , however , when King Cadwallon was at war , leeks would have looked magnificent ! For the sake of botanical clarity , one should remember that the Welsh Allium porrum of the seventh century would almost certainly have been introduced by the Romans , whose love of all alliums , include leeks , is discussed later . It is most unbelievable to have been the untamed eccentric which , even back then , was only found get in rocky and remote corner of the west coast of Wales .
In her wonderful book The Origin of Plants , Maggie Campbell - Culver reminds us that the entire native universe of Britain , following the Roman occupation , would not have made a distinction between the vegetable garden and farmland used for domesticate crops . life-time was a matter of survival and the integral community would be concentre on incur and growing enough food just to continue alive . Only monks and a few scholars could read and write , and even they spent most of their time originate and foraging . Unlike today ’s vernacular manifestation of a kitchen garden as being ‘ the cabbage patch ’ , at the fourth dimension St David was combat the Saxon invaders the verbal description of a place where vegetables were grown was the Leac - garth ( herbaceous plant garden ) , Leac meaning ‘ herb ’ in Anglo - Saxon . There would seem little doubt , therefore , that leek were an important part of Anglo - Saxon solid food culture . Our obsession with this allium continues to this day , as is evident from its grandness on the show - bench . Perhaps the literal translation of the location of the struggle led by King Cadwallon – an nameless discipline of leek somewhere in South Wales – sound out more about the vegetable ’s lieu in Welsh civilisation than what actual species the Welsh and their hated Saxon opposition could have been trample over when they help themselves from some impoverished provincial ’s vegetable dapple . In any effect , the leeks those brave soldiers fighting for Henry V wear would have been a Gallic kind , the final result of a thousand years of cultivation after the fall of Rome and a distant coition of the rough-cut leek we enjoy today .
No Wild Side
Unlike many of the vegetable graphic symbol I drop a line about , although domesticated from the wild Allium porrum , the civilise leek is known botanically as a cultigen – a terminus used to draw a cultivated plant lacking wild counterpart . This is because domestication and selective facts of life over many M of years has start the world a mintage that is now quite clear-cut from its wild ancestors .
platter show that the genteel or common Allium porrum was domesticize in Egypt and Mesopotamia at least 4,500 class ago . However , as the savage leek is native to all the countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Black Sea , as well as the westerly and northern persona of the Fertile Crescent , it would most likely have been forage by our antecedent long after it was naturalise . It is look at naturalize in northern Europe , including parts of the U.K. , throughout Indo - China and , as a result of European colonization in the last 600 years , much of Australia and parts of the North and South American continents .
The longsighted outgrowth of domestication has given us a routine of distinct forms which have embedded themselves in several different food refinement . violent leeks are onion - like in appearance , with small bulbs or clusters of bulb at their base . naturalise scallion are fraction into five decided groups , from which several different case were hone : the Com- mon Leek , the Greater - headed Garlic , the Pearl Onion , the Kurrat , and the Taree or Persian Leek .
It is the change in the concentric , unsheathe leaf base that were selected by farmers to create long , edible pseudo - stems . These are off-key stems formed from the swollen leafage base which we associate with the distinctive appearance of the rough-cut leek.4 Elephant garlic is a member of the Greater - head Garlic group and those of us who have develop and eaten it will attest to it see more like a giant garlic bulb than a character of scallion . Only when eaten does its leek - like flavour occur through , and those expect the pungency of real garlic will be disappointed . ditto mark a skinny Taiwanese relative , the Pearl Onion , which is known as a button baby onion in the U.K. and a cream pitcher in the USA . Frequently sold as a pickle onion , it is , in fact , a type of pickle leek ! The other two , the Kurrat and the Taree , seem like to the common leek . The former is the result of selection from kind of wild garlic , with an vehemence on the leave , and remains pop in Egypt today . It ’s very much a ‘ cut - and - total - again ’ harvest , harvested every few weeks until the industrial plant is exhausted – which can take over a twelvemonth . The Taree is very similar to the Kurrat , but with narrow leaf , and is a pop fixings in the cuisine of northern Iran . cum from the Greater - headed Garlic chemical group is sterile , but the other four groups are interfertile and will promptly cross with each other , producing loanblend of varying culinary worth .
There are other Allium called wild leeks , which are an entirely different species . I call up of the American wild leek , A. tricoccum , usually known as ramps , which is foraged in the springiness and sold at farmers markets . It is rather yummy and , bewilderingly , looks like the unrelated wild garlic A. ursinum which I forage near my household . Also known as ramsons , risky garlic is a wondrous , fresh - smelling batch in springtime when great drifts can be seen in British woodland glades and along rural roadside verges .
Food Stories
Thousands of years before the Welsh started to squabble over the ethnical significance and merit of the low scallion , it had cemented a place in the earliest recipes of the easterly Mediterranean . The story of the leek ’s journey onto our plates are closely entwined with those of its two cousins , garlic and Allium cepa . They are referenced on Sumerian Cuneiform tablets , nearly 4,500 days one-time , along with other culinary essentials . Tablets from Mesopotamia , dating back to between 1600 and 1700 bce , and known as the Yale Babylonian Tablets , belike play the oldest cookery book of account in the world and let in around 40 formula in which the Allium genus figures large . On the pad , the leek – most probably the Taree – is called karsu . It would seem that the civilisations of Mesopotamia liked to manipulate Allium porrum and garlic together strictly for aliment , as there is no record of them having any medicinal or wizardly properties . In the Old Testament there is a description of foodie pleasures lost to the Israelites who , while wandering the desert with Moses , think of the good thing they had left behind : ‘ … We remember the fish which we did deplete in Egypt , the cucumber vine , melons , leeks , onions and garlic … ’ ( Numbers 11:4–6 ) .
It would appear that the Egyptians also enjoy their scallion , which would have include the Kurrat , and even venerated them . They appear on hieroglyph and on the pass or in the hand of the god Osiris . The papistical Saturnia pavonia Nero ( 37–68 ce ) may have conk young , but I doubt this can be pick on his love of leek . Like St David , who believed exhaust leeks help oneself lube his larynx , Nero would regularly eat large quantities to help his tattle part . As a effect , he was give the nick - name Porrophagus – ‘ leek - eater ’ in Latin – an insulting term from an ungrateful empire . Like so many vegetables that are at the heart of European cuisine today thanks to the Romans , the tame Allium porrum was grown across their empire .
On a more positive note , it is not just the Welsh but also the Romanians who have the scallion as a bedrock of their cultural indistinguishability ; the Scots do , too . One just has to think of Cock - a - Leekie soup , a meal in itself , with many regional variations that all include leek . The other quintessential Scottish dish is porridge , the name being a combining of the word ‘ pottage ’ and the French word porée . The Romance Holy Scripture for leek , porrum , became poireau in French and Porree or Lauch in German . Porrum was first used to describe a thick , leek - based vegetable soup like Cock - a - Leekie , which became extended to describe any glutinous and soupy dish made using dried pea or oatmeal.6
A Never-Ending Search
I have been on a quest to find a genuine Allium porrum that was first bred in Wales – the John and Jane Doe of the veggie world : lose , but hopefully not deceased . This has only get me as far as the 1939 Carter ’s Blue Book of Gardening ejaculate catalogue where five varieties of Allium porrum are list . In very small print at the bottom of the pageboy is grounds that it did once exist : ‘ The Welsh Leek … A ok better mixture of the quondam WELSH ’ [ their Capital ] for the princely amount of money of 10d [ 4 raw pence ] an ounce [ 25 g ] ’ . Sadly , no longer uncommitted to bribe anywhere .
This , the most late reference I have been able to find of a commercial-grade Welsh Allium porrum , is proof enough that they were usually available before World War II . Despite extensive research and endless enquires to leek growers across Wales there is no evidence to intimate a local heritage or heirloom leek has ever been bred . However , my hunt for this elusive veg continues . Maybe in some forget corner of a garden shed in deepest Wales a Carter ’s seed packet still outlast …
Notes
Recommended Reads
Leeks : The Ultimate Winter Crop
Becoming A True Seed Detective : Mastering the missionary station
The Seed Detective
Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables
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