Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets

The Acetaria (1699) was a book with many subjects: the rights and wrongs of vegetarianism; the virtues of eating more salads; cultivating the plants that made them memorable; and recipes for their use. It shows John Evelyn as more than arbiter of visual taste -- his central historical role -- but as one of England's first gastronomes. Acetaria exposes English cookery at a critical moment as it departed from medieval forms and embraced the new styles of France and Europe. Its arguments still have resonance and can be counted as revolutionary at the time they were first expressed.