On Food and Cooking

after winter’s scarcity; in northeast Italy, for
example, pistic is a springtime collection of
more than 50 different wild greens boiled and
then sauteed together.
Because they’re thin and broad, leaves
both edible (lettuce, cabbage, grape) and
inedible (banana, fig, bamboo) are used as
wrappers to contain, protect, and aromatize
fillings of meat, fish, grains, and other foods.
They’re often blanched first to make the
leaves flaccid and pliable.
Though many leaf vegetables have
distinctive flavors, most of them share a
common, fresh aroma note referred to as
“green” or “grassy.” This comes from
particular molecules that are 6 carbon atoms
long — “leaf alcohol” (hexanol) and “leaf
aldehyde” (hexanal) — and that are produced
when leaves are cut or crushed. The cell
damage frees enzymes that break up the long
fatty-acid carbon chains in the membranes of
the chloroplasts (p. 261). Cooking inactivates