More Than Salads and Sandwich Ingredient - The History of Lettuce

More lettuce knowledge than you can shake a leaf at.

Lettuce has been receiving some bad press recently. In the waning months of 2018, Romaine lettuce had been linked to an outbreak of the E.Coli bacteria that had infected 59 people in 15 different states, according to the Center for Disease Control. Wanting to learn more about the situation, I ventured into the agricultural rabbit hole surrounding the leafy vegetable and discovered its storied past, and its current place in our society.

[img source: https://www.almanac.com/plant/lettuce ]

Lettuce, or Lactuca sativa, is a member of the sunflower family, and was originally native to an area spreading from the Mediterranean to Siberia and have since spread all over the world. Its latin name is derived from the Roman Lac, or milk, as a reference to the latex that would secrete from cut stems. Lettuce nutritionally are high in vitamin K, vitamin A, folate, and iron and have historically been served raw and cooked, in both things like salad and stir frys.

[img source: https://bonnieplants.com/how-to-grow/growing-lettuce/ ]

This leafy vegetable is a flowering plant with a taproot system, like with carrots or beets, with smaller secondary roots. Asian varieties have longer taproots and more extensive secondary root systems than their Western and North American varieties. When the plant flowers, it becomes bitter and ultimately does not have a very long shelf life.

[img source: https://www.thedailygarden.us/garden-word-of-the-day/roots ]

Over the centuries, we’ve selectively bred it to have: larger seeds, larger leaves, larger heads, better taste and texture, different leaf shapes and colors, lower latex content, and delayed flowering. We also genetically modified it to have greater herbicide tolerance, greater resistance to insects and fungi, and slower flowering patterns. Our selective breeding has led to seven primary types of lettuce, Leaf, Romaine (aka Cos), Iceberg (aka Crisphead), Butterhead, Summercrisp, Celtuce (aka Stem) and Oilseed.

[img source: https://www.thespruceeats.com/varieties-of-lettuce-4065606 ]

What I found most interesting about lettuce was the storied history that it has throughout the world. Initially, this leafy vegetable had been cultivated in Egypt for the production of oil from its seeds, and eventually its edible leaves. This 2680 BCE iteration looked like a large version of modern romaine lettuce. Ultimately, this crop was passed to the Greeks, and in turn the Romans. In medieval herbological texts, lettuce was viewed as a medicinal herb. It was also first described in its current modern categories, head, loose-leaf, and Romaine, in these texts. It was then brought to the Americas by Columbus in the late 15th century, and cultivated further in Europe, especially in Holland in the early 18th Century.

[img source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/462744930453191011 ]

In antiquity and contemporary times, Lettuce had been linked to sex and fertility, as well as having certain narcotic effects. The Egyptians and Romans both believed that it would make a woman more fertile, as well as producing an aphrodisiac effect, while the Greeks contrarily believed that ingesting it would cause male impotence. The latex sap that stems of lettuce produced also had a mild narcotic, and was called “sleepwort” by the Anglo-Saxons. It was also homeopathic medicine for smallpox and typhoid among numerous other maladies.

[img source: https://mymodernmet.com/medieval-herbal-remedies-guide-online/ ]

There are also certain religions that had different beliefs centered around lettuce as well. During Jewish Passover it was eaten with matzah as a part of the Seder, a traditional holy meal that marks the holiday’s beginning. The Yazidi people of northern Iraq hold a religious prohibition on eating lettuce due to either religious reverence of the the leafy vegetable, or historical persecution (The jury is apparently still out on this one.)

[img source: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/what-is-a-seder-plate-1.5244183 ]

I initially didn’t think very much about lettuce. I had never thought much about it when I had it in Caesar salads, nor in my BLT sandwiches. But it’s a very interesting and complex vegetable with a distinct foot print throughout history. If there are any other pieces of produce that you are interested in please -lettuce- know and we will be more than happy to share!