by Rebecca Rupp
For the science of asparagus and urine, see Harold McGee’s The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (rev. ed., Scribner, 2004): 314–315. Also see: Mitchell, S.C. “Food Idiosyncrasies: Beetroot and Asparagus.” Drug Metabolism & Disposition 29, no. 4 (2001): 539–543. The article is available online at http://dmd.aspetjournals.org/content/29/4/539.full.
Waring, R. H., S. C. Mitchell, and G. R. Fenwick. “The Chemical Nature of the Urinary Odour Produced by Man After Asparagus Ingestion.” Xenobiotica 17, no. 11 (November 1987): 1363–1371.
An account of the discovery of asparagine can be found in: Street, H. E. and G. E. Trease. “The discovery of asparagine.” Annals of Science 7, 1951: 70–76.
For the woes of the American asparagus farmers in the wake of the War on Drugs, see Timothy Egan’s “War on Peruvian Drugs Takes a Victim: U.S. Asparagus,” reported in The New York Times, 25 April 2004.
Information about Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly’s film Asparagus! can be found online at www.ironweedfilms.com/films/asparagus or www.asparagusthemovie.com.
The Locavore website is found at www.locavores.com.
For more accounts of local eating, see Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon’s Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet (Three Rivers Press, 2007), Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins, 2007), and Ben Hewitt’s The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food (Rodale Books, 2009).
Beans
An excellent all-purpose source of information on the history of beans is Ken Albala’s Beans: A History (Berg, 2007).
For information on the domestication of food plants in eastern North America, see: Smith, Bruce D. “Eastern North America as an Independent Center of Plant Domestication.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 103, no. 33 (15 August 2006): 12223–12228. Also by Bruce D. Smith, see Rivers of Change (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).
For general information on fava beans, see Raymond Sokolov’s “Broad Bean Universe.” Natural History, December 1984: 84–86.
Umberto Eco’s “How the Bean Saved Civilization” appeared in The New York Times Magazine, 18 April 1999: 36–42.
Information on nitrogen and nitrogen fixation can be found in John Emsley’s Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (Oxford University Press, 2001), 287–293; and in Lubert Stryer’s Biochemistry (W. H. Freeman, 1995), 713–716.
Christine Goldberg discusses the history of “Jack and the Beanstalk” in “The Composition of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’” in Marvels & Tales, 15, no. 1 (2001): 11–26. For the online text, see http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v015/15.1goldberg.html. A history of “Jack and the Beanstalk” and alternative versions of the tale can also be found at the SurLaLune Fairy Tales website at www.surlalunefairytales.com/jackbeanstalk/history.html.
For images and information on the Babylonian culinary tablets, see the Yale Babylonian Collection, established in 1909 with a gift from J. P. Morgan. The website is found at www.yale.edu/nelc/babylonian.html.
For an account of humanity’s uneasy relationship with fava beans, see: Katz, Solomon H. “Fava Bean Consumption: A Case for the Co-Evolution of Genes and Culture.” In Food and Evolution: Toward a Theory of Human Food Habits, edited by Marvin Harris and Eric B. Ross, 133–162. Temple University Press, 1989.
Melody Voith discussed the biochemistry of L-dopa in “L-Dopa” in the special “Top Pharmaceuticals That Changed The World” issue of Chemical & Engineering News, 83, no. 25 (June 2005).
An English version of Le Menagier de Paris (1393), translated by Janet Hinson, can be found online at www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html. Also see The Good Wife’s Guide (Le Menagier de Paris): A Medieval Household Book, translated by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rosa (Cornell University Press, 2009).
Alexander Lobrano’s history of cassoulet, “Spilling the Beans,” appeared in Forbes magazine, 8 December 2008. The article can be found online at www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/2008/1208/071.html.
The text of Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery (1796) can be found at www.fullbooks.com/American-Cookery.html.
Statistics on national and international bean production can be found at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s website at http://faostat.fao.org.
Jay D. Mann’s How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way: A Guide to Safer Food (JDM & Associates, 2004) discusses poisons in everyday foods, including the cyanide-prone bean.
On de-gassing the bean, see David Cohen’s “Irradiation Produces Low-Gas Beans” in the New Scientist, 27 March 2002.
The science, history, and pros and cons of oxygen are the subject of Nick Lane’s Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World (Oxford University Press, 2002). Also see “Oxygen” in John Emsley’s Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (Oxford University Press, 2001): 297–304.
From the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Nutrient Data Laboratory, “Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) of Selected Foods — 2007” (2007) is a comprehensive overview with tabulated test results. It is available online in pdf format at www.ars.usda.gov/sp2userfiles/place/12354500/data/orac/orac07.pdf. Also see:
Decker, Eric A., Kathleen Warner, Mark P. Richards, and Fereidoon Shahidi. “Measuring Antioxidant Effectiveness in Food.” J. Agric. Food Chem. 53, no. 10 (2005): 4303–4310.
Halvorsen, B. L., K. Holte, M. C. Myhrstad, I. Barikmo, et al. “A Systematic Screening of Total Antioxidants in Dietary Plants.” Journal of Nutrition 132, no. 3 (2002): 461–471 Marandino, Cristin. “Eleven Healing Foods.” Vegetarian Times, June 2002:56–61.
Wu X., G. R. Beecher, J. M. Holden, D. B. Haytowitz, S. E. Gebhardt, and R. L. Prior. “Lipophilic and Hydrophilic Antioxidant Capacities of Common Foods in the United States.” J. Agric. Food Chem. 52 (2004): 4026–4037.
Beets
For disliked beets, see the original AOL “America’s Most Hated Foods” poll at http://community.livejournal.com/about_food/76665.html.
For more food dislikes, see “America’s Least Favorite Foods” at www.slashfood.com/2009/02/02/americas-least-favorite-foods.
Sullivan, Amy. “Food Phobias: How to Make Peace with Beets.” The Atlantic, 6 July 2010.
For information on geosmin and beets, see: Lu, G., C. G. Edwards, J. K. Fellman, D. S. Mattinson, and J. Navazio. “Biosynthetic Origin of Geosmin in Red Beets (Beta vulgaris L.)” J. Agric. Food Chem. 51, no. 4 (2003): 1026–1029.
R. R. M. Paterson, A. Venâncio, and N. Lima. “Why Do Food and Drink Smell Like Earth?” in Communicating Current Research and Educational Topics and Trends in Applied Microbiology, ed. A. Mendez-Vilas (Formatex, 2007): 120–128. Available online at www.formatex.org/microbio/pdf/Pages120-128.pdf.
Ritter, Stephen K. “How Nature Makes Earth Aroma.” Chemical & Engineering News, 19 September 2007. The article is online at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i39/8539notw8.html.
Stephen Nottingham’s online book, Beetroot (2004), is available at http://stephennottingham.co.uk/beetroot.htm.
Excerpts from Charlemagne’s Capitularies can be found online at Professor Paul Halsall’s Internet Medieval Sourcebook at www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html.
Also see Pierre Riché’s Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
On beet-derived pink urine, see: Mitchell, S. C. “Food Idiosyncrasies: Beetroot and Asparagus.” Drug Metabolism & Disposition 29, no. 4 (April 2001): 539–543. The article is available online at http://dmd.aspetjournals.org/content/29/4/539.full.
For statistics on the world’s major crops, see the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization website at http://faostat.fao.org.
For more information on the sugar beet, see Henry Hobhouse’s Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind (reprint, Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005).
Cabbages
The text of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is available online at Project Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org/ebook
s/10800.
For the complete text of Samuel Pepys’s diary, including the account of his unhappy cabbage dinner, see www.pepysdiary.com.
John Winthrop, Jr.’s complete 1651 seed list can be found in Ann Leighton’s Early American Gardens, (Houghton Mifflin, 1970): 190.
For more detail on W. Atlee Burpee and his seed company, see Ken Kraft’s Garden to Order: The Story of Mr. Burpee’s Seeds and How They Grow (Doubleday, 1963).
For the account of Mrs. Davidson and her difficult encounter with cabbage, see “The Social Status of a Vegetable” in M. F. K. Fisher’s Serve It Forth (Reprint, North Point Press, 2002. First published 1937.).
For more detail on Captain Cook and scurvy, see Francis E. Cuppage’s Captain Cook and the Conquest of Scurvy (Greenwood Press, 1994). Also see Jonathan Lamb’s “Captain Cook and the Scourge of Scurvy” on the BBC’s website: www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/captaincook_scurvy_01.shtml.
For lightning that resembles broccoli, see Ivan Amato’s “Sprites Trigger Sky-High Chemistry.” Chemical & Engineering News 84, no. 12 (2006): 40–41.
For cabbages in space, see: Wheeler, R. M., C. L. Mackowiak, J.C. Sager, W. M. Knott, and W. L. Berry. “Proximate Composition of CELSS Crops Grown in NASA’s Biomass Production Chamber.” Advances in Space Research 18 (1996): 43–47.
For more information on biomimetics, see Tom Mueller’s “Biomimetics: Design by Nature” in National Geographic magazine (April 2008); Rowan Hooper’s “Ideas Stolen Right from Nature.” Wired (November 2004); and “Technology that Imitates Nature.” The Economist (9 June 2005).
Carrots
For more on the non-carrot-eating Peter, see Leslie Linder’s The History of the Tale of Peter Rabbit (Warne, 1976).
An account of Henry Ford’s carrot obsession can be found in William C. Richards’s The Last Billionaire (Grizzell, 2007. First published 1948). Also see David L. Lewis’s The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Wayne State University Press, 1976).
The Vegetable Orchestra, www.vegetableorchestra.org
For information on using paintings in the study of the history of vegetables, see: Zeven, A. C. and W. A. Brandenburg. “Use of Paintings from the 16th to 19th Centuries to Study the History of Domesticated Plants.” Economic Botany 40, no. 4 (1986): 397–408.
For more detail on carotenoids in carrots, see entries in Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (rev. ed., Scribner, 2004) and David Lee’s Nature’s Palette: The Science of Plant Color (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Also see: Simon, Philipp W. and Xenia Y. Wolff. “Carotenes in Typical and Dark Orange Carrots.” J. Agric. and Food Chem. 35, no. 6 (1987): 1017–1022.
For the nutritional differences between raw and cooked vegetables, see Sushma Subramanian’s “Fact or Fiction: Raw Veggies Are Healthier than Cooked Ones” in Scientific American (March 2009). See the text online: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=raw-veggies-are-healthier.
For the story of “Cat’s Eyes” Cunningham, see Gavin Mortimer’s “Cat’s Eyes” in the November 2010 issue of the Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine, available online at www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Cats-Eyes.html.
For an account of carotenemia, see Berton Roueché’s The Orange Man and Other Narratives of Medical Detection (Little, Brown and Co., 1971).
For more on enhanced supervegetables, see Richard Manning’s “Super Organics” in Wired (12.05, May 2004), available online at http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/SuperOrganics.htm. Also see Don Baker’s “Beet Generation” in Vegetarian Times (November 2004), online at www.vegetariantimes.com/features/editors_picks/377.
See Natural News Network online for “Scientists Genetically Engineer ‘Super Carrot’ Rich in Calcium” by David Gutierrez (1 August 2008) at www.naturalnews.com/023750_calcium_scientists_carrots.html.
Also see: Morris, J., K. M. Hawthorne, T. Hotze, S. A. Abrams, and K. D. Hirschi. “Nutritional Impact of Elevated Calcium Transport Activity in Carrots.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105, no. 5 (2008): 1431–1435.
For World War II’s Dr. Carrot and company, see the BBC’s “Dig for Victory!” at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2263529.
Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jane. The Ministry of Food: Thrifty Wartime Ways to Feed Your Family. (Hodder & Stoughton, 2010).
For more on parsnips, see Roger B. Swain’s “A Taste for Parsnips” in his book Earthly Pleasures: Tales from a Biologist’s Garden (Scribner, 1981).
More details on Queen Anne’s lace can be found in Jack Sanders’s Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles: The Lives and Lore of North American Wildflowers (Ragged Mountain Press, 1993) and in Claire Shaver Houghton’s Green Immigrants: The Plants That Transformed America (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978).
Visit the World Carrot Museum (www.carrotmuseum.co.uk) for the Trojan horse story and other carrot tidbits.
Celery
For an account of Dr. Brown’s Celery Tonic and general information on celery, see Eugene Garfield’s “From Tonic to Psoriasis: Stalking Celery’s Secrets” in Current Contents 8, no. 18 (6 May 1985): 3–12.
For images and information on celery vases, see “The Celery Vase: A Prominent Way to Serve an Exotic Vegetable” at the WorthPoint Corporation’s website: www.worthpoint.com/blogentry/the-celery-vase-a-prominent-way-to-serve-an-exotic-vegetable. Also see Dorothy Dougherty’s Celery Vases: Art Glass, Pattern Glass, and Cut Glass (Schiffer Publishing, 2007).
On psoralens in celery, see: E. Finkelsein, U. Afek, E. Gross, N. Aharoni, L. Rosenberg, and S. Halevy. “An Outbreak of Phytophotodermatitis Due to Celery.” Int. J. Dermatol. 33, no. 2 (1994): 116–118.
Scheel, Lester D., Vernon B. Perone, Robert L. Larkin, and Richard E. Kupel. “The Isolation and Characterization of Two Phototoxic Furanocoumarins (Psoralens) from Diseased Celery.” Biochemistry 2, no. 5 (1963): 1127–1131.
Jay D. Mann’s How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way: A Guide to Safer Food (JDM Associates, 2004) discusses poisons in everyday foods, including celery psoralens.
For information on John Evelyn, Acetaria, and his unfinished masterpiece, Elysium Britannicum or the Royal Gardens, see: O’Malley, Therese and Joachim WolschkeBulmahn, eds. “John Evelyn’s ‘Elysium Britannicum’ and European Gardening”. Volume 17 of the Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture series, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998. The text is available online at www.doaks.org/publications/doaks_online_publications/Evelyn/evel013.pdf.
William R. Snyder discusses celeriac in “Celery’s Taking Root” in the The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2010.
The sad truth about celery’s negative calories is explained in Anahad O’Connor’s Never Shower in a Thunderstorm: Surprising Facts and Misleading Myths About Our Health and the World We Live In (Times Books, 2007).
Corn
An excellent general reference on corn is Betty Fussell’s wide-ranging The Story of Corn (Knopf, 1992).
For state-by-state crop statistics, see the National Agricultural Statistics Service website at www.nass.usda.gov. The U.S. Grains Council, at www.grains.org, has production statistics on corn and other grains. The Environmental Protection Agency at www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/cropmajor.html also lists statistics on major crops grown in the United States.
For the history of popcorn, see Andrew F. Smith’s Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America (Smithsonian Institution, 2001).
For popcorn production statistics, see the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center’s Popcorn Profile at www.agmrc.org/commodities__products/grains__oilseeds/corn_grain/popcorn_profile.cfm.
For the history of whiskey, see Sarah Hand Meacham’s Every Home a Distillery (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), Tom Standage’s A History of the World in 6 Glasses (Walker & Co., 2005), and Mary Miley Theobald’s “When Whiskey Was King of Drink” in the Colonial Williamsburg Journal (Summer 2008).
All three cantos of Joel Barlow’s poem “The Hasty Pudding” (179
3) can be found online at www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hasty-pudding.
For more information on corn and vampires, see: Hampl, J. S. and W. S. Hampl, 3rd. “Pellagra and the Origin of a Myth: Evidence from European Literature and Folklore.” J. of the Royal Soc. of Medicine 90, no. 11 (November 1997): 636–639.
For general information on pellagra, see Daphne A. Roe’s A Plague of Corn: The Social History of Pellagra (Cornell University Press, 1973) and Walter Gratzer’s Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (Oxford University Press, 2005).
On hybrid corn, see: Crow, James F. “90 Years Ago: The Beginning of Hybrid Maize.” Genetics 148, March 1998: 923–928.
On diversity and transgenic corn, see Peter Canby’s excellent article “Retreat to Subsistence” in The Nation, 5 July 2010: 30–36.
For more on corn palaces, see Henry Wiencek’s “House of Corn” in Americana, September/October 1992: 110–112. Also see the home page of Mitchell, South Dakota’s Corn Palace, at www.cornpalace.org.
For an account of the Kellogg Brothers and cornflakes, see Harvey Green’s Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport and American Society (Pantheon Books, 1986). Also see Gerald Carson’s “Cornflake Crusade” in American Heritage 8, no. 4 (June 1957): 66–85.
Cucumbers
For more information on Landon Carter, see Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation by Rhys Isaac (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Excerpts from Landon Carter’s diary can be found on the National Humanities Center website at http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/economies/text5/landoncarterdiary.pdf.
The account of the deadly cucumbers is found in Samuel Pepys’s diary, online at www.pepysdiary.com.
