23 April 2025

John Evelyn (1620–1706) is probably best known to many as a diarist. Alongside Samuel Pepys, he is regarded as one of the most important sources of insights into life in England in the second half of the 17th century. But keeping diaries was not Evelyn’s sole occupation. He was also a practical type who enjoyed tinkering around with things and finding out how they worked. His impressive oeuvre contains numerous texts with instructions for all kinds of things: from purifying the air to urban planning, forestry and horticulture, not to mention painting and the art of engraving. He even translated a work describing how to set up a library.

One of his most idiosyncratic works – Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets – has found its way into the HAB. As the title suggests, the book is about the cultivation and preparation of salads. Lauding the benefits of a largely plant-based diet, Evelyn points out that ‘all the World were Eaters, and Composers of Sallets in its best and brightest Age’.

His interest extends not only to the various salad ingredients, modes of preparation and properties but also to their history. Indeed, the text is a veritable work of literature – and not only in terms of form. Through a wealth of background information and poetic references (from Homer to Milton) the lowly salad is elevated to an object of supreme value. According to Evelyn, people were already eating salad in antiquity and were well aware of its health benefits. To furnish proof that this is a subject of scholarly relevance he cites numerous English, Greek and Latin sources.
He thus defines his theme as:

‘Part of Natural History, the Product of Horticulture, and the Field, … which, as it concerns a Part of Philosophy, I may (without Vanity) be allow’d to have taken some Pains in Cultivating, as an inferior Member of the Royal Society.’

What he actually classifies as salad can, on the other hand, be defined in a nutshell.

‘A particular Composition of certain Crude and fresh Herbs, such as usually are, or may safely be eaten with some Acetous Juice, Oyl, Salt, &c. to give them a grateful Gust and Vehicle.’

This definition is then followed by an alphabetically arranged glossary of the 73 main ingredients (‘Materials and Furniture’), including tips on how to grow and prepare them as well as detailed instructions on how to make a dressing for the perfect salad in nine steps. In this respect, little has changed in our eating habits. Now, as then, the main ingredients are oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, plus a little sugar and mustard to taste. He also suggests adding pureed egg yolk, which no doubt lent the dressing a mayonnaise-like consistency.

To enhance the usefulness of his book in practice, Evelyn includes a fold-out table providing concise information at a glance about the correct way to grow salad, the right time to harvest it, and in what quantities. So anyone who finds Evelyn’s flowery prose and poetic excerpts too long-winded can skip them and leaf straight through to the middle section.

In the final section, Evelyn adds a collection of recipes apparently authored by ‘an Experienc’d Housewife’ – justifying this with reference to ‘Noble and Illustrious Persons both among the Ancient and Modern’, who had done the same thing in the past. He thus appears to consider the recipe an inferior genre – and thus not coincidentally a female preserve. Evelyn aspires to higher things with his Acetaria – dissecting the subject of salad precisely, leaf by leaf. But is Evelyn’s book ultimately really only about salad? His scholarly reflections also suggest other interpretations that can be read variously as political allusions, theological and philosophical reflections or moralising social critique.

For Evelyn, eating raw food in season was, on the one hand, about getting back to the roots. Yet it was also about culinary refinement, which is to be achieved through the skilful preparation and combination of ingredients, thereby ensuring that the salad appealed to the sophisticated palate (‘Esculent Plants and Herbs, improv’d by Culture, Industry, and Art’ of the Gard’ner).
He viewed the ‘Sallet Dresser’ as a virtuoso, capable of creating a work of art through the harmonious composition of ingredients, analogous to a musical composition:

‘Every Plant should come in to bear its part, without being over-power’d by some Herb of a stronger taste, so as to endanger the native Sapor and vertue of the rest; but fall into their places, like the Notes in Music, in which there should be nothing harsh or grating: And tho’ admitting some Discords (to distinguish and illustrate the rest) striking in the more sprightly, and sometimes gentler Notes, reconcile all Dissonancies, and melt them into an agreeable Composition.’

The Acetaria is so elaborate that it is perhaps not a prototypical how-to book after all; in fact, right from the start it claims to be a ‘discourse’. At the same time, many of its elements are very typical of a genre we often encounter in our collections: e.g. the paratext, the alphabetical glossary, the table, the orientation towards everyday use, and the detailed, step-by-step descriptions of horticultural and culinary processes.

The Acetaria is an impressive illustration of the socially broad readership of how-to books and the diverse goals that they set out to achieve. As well as conveying practical knowledge, the book exhibits a plethora of other concerns, including those of a literary, philosophical, theological, etymological, scientific or social reformist nature. Like many authors of early how-to texts, Evelyn appears unable to decide what kind of knowledge he ultimately wishes to communicate and what kind of book he wants to write. He seems to believe that the value of practical knowledge needs to be enhanced by placing it in a corresponding (scholarly) framework.

Yet Evelyn is scarcely able to conceal the almost childish delight he takes in practical activity. If the purpose of knowledge is to better understand God’s work (‘the most Useful, and Admirable of all the Aspectable Works of God’), then burrowing into the earth with both hands, watching your own plants grow and later processing and enjoying the harvest is simply a lot of fun. His treatise thus ends not with yet another scholarly reference, but instead with the words:

Happy the Man, who from Ambition freed,
A little Garden, little Field does feed.

PURL: http://diglib.hab.de/?link=204