Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HISTORY AND COOKERY In the "Gentleman's Magazine" for January, 1793, 's a review of a book entitled " The Benefit of Starving; or, the Advantages of Hunger, Cold, and Nakedness-, intended as a Cordial for the Poor, and an Apology for the Rich." When one realises how little use we make of our opportunities, he can but fancy that every one has taken this book to heart and decided to live up to its title. Otherwise it is hard to conceive why it is that so easily cultivated a vegetable as asparagus is still an expensive luxury; or why it is that such simply grown delicacies as salsify and scorzonera are still so little known in England. In the course of a very amusing article, James Payn once pointed out how delightful it would be, when called on by folks whom we did not wish to know, to return them this by post: " Mr So-and-So's compliments, but he knows a great deal too many people already," and this is the sentiment which most people seem to feel towards vegetables and fruits which were not given to them in their childhood. Asparagus, however, is no novelty, being, indeed, one of the oldest of cultivated vegetables. Cato the elder discussed the culture of asparagus at length, and Pliny referred to it as worthy of the gardener's tenderest care. In his eleventh Satire, Juvenal speaks of it as one of the dishes for his feast: " Montani Asparagi, posito quos legit villica fuso." This, of course, refers to wild asparagus, probably the same species as that which we now cultivate, and which is still found wild at certain spots on the coast of Wales, Cornwall, Dorset, and the Channel Isles?most notably on Asparagus Island, near the Lizard Point. It is even said to be commonly found in the Elysian fields. For many hundred years, however, it is as "cultivated asparagus" alone that the ...