which Pliny professed to be ashamed: “thus
we turn into a corrupt feast the earth’s
monstrosities, those which even the animals
instinctively avoid” (Book19). The name is a
corruption, via Italian, of the Arabic al’
qarshuf, meaning “little cardoon”; food
historian Charles Perry suggests that the large
buds we know today, several inches in
diameter, were developed in the late Middle
Ages in Moorish Spain.
The artichoke. The “heart” is the flower base
and corresponds to the fleshy portion of the
strawberry and fig.
Thistles are members of the lettuce family
and so relatives of salsify and sun-chokes, all
of which share a similar flavor. The edible
parts of the artichoke are the fleshy bases of