Think you’ve heard of every vegetable that’s ever been grown? Hold that thought. There’s an entire forgotten world of crops that once filled gardens, markets, and dinner tables across Europe and beyond. These weren’t minor side players in agricultural history either. They were staples, sometimes cultivated for centuries, even millennia.
Honestly, it’s kind of unsettling when you realize how much has vanished from our collective food memory. Some disappeared because they couldn’t compete with easier-to-grow alternatives. Others simply didn’t fit into the mechanized farming systems we built after the industrial revolution. Yet these plants were prized for their unique flavors, nutritional value, or sheer reliability in harsh conditions. So let’s dig into five ancient vegetables that somehow slipped through the cracks of time, and explore why modern farming left them behind.
Skirret: The Medieval Sweet Root That Potatoes Replaced
Before potatoes took over European kitchens, there was skirret. This perennial plant from the family Apiaceae produced clusters of bright white, sweetish roots, each roughly six to eight inches long, and was used as a vegetable in the same manner as parsnips. According to the 1677 work by gardener John Worlidge, skirret was “the sweetest, whitest, and most pleasant of roots,” and was introduced to Europe in classical times, brought to the British Isles by the Romans.
Here’s the thing: skirret actually had a major advantage. Before sugar from sugar cane and sugar beets became popular, skirret was a major source of sweetness for Europeans. The Dutch still call it “suikerwortel” and the Germans “zuckerwurzel” – both meaning “sugar root.” Skirret cultivation was common in monastic gardens, gradually spreading in popularity and eventually making its way onto the tables of the medieval aristocracy.
Yet despite its impressive resume, skirret couldn’t stand up to the potato’s convenience and storage capabilities. Skirret had a secret weakness: it didn’t keep well, and with no refrigeration in ancient times, its shelf-life was a real problem, so as potatoes rose to fame, skirret simply couldn’t compete. It’s a low yield crop and has never been viable as a commercial crop, falling out of favor until recently, and even now this vegetable is difficult to find. Sometimes progress just means one delicious vegetable gets replaced by a more practical one.
Alexanders: The Roman Celery Lost to Time
Walk along the coasts of Britain today and you might stumble across alexanders growing wild in hedgerows. Most people won’t recognize it. Introduced by the Romans, Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) was once grown as a garden herb and culinary vegetable throughout Britain. The plant was also known as Petroselinum alexandrinum, the Parsley of Alexandria, and was a highly-popular herb in the Mediterranean during the reign of Alexander the Great.
This wasn’t some niche ingredient either. Alexanders’ popularity endured for several centuries and in medieval cuisine it was served commonly as a table vegetable. The Romans ate basically every part: Ancient Romans were very fond of Alexanders, and ate the stems, leaves, roots, and flower buds as vegetables. The taste? The young foliage is intermediate in flavor between celery and parsley and the seeds have an acrid, peppery taste.
So why did it vanish? Simple economics and convenience. It fell out of favour in the 18th century after celery started being mass produced to replace wild herbs and vegetables. Alexanders was used in many dishes in much the same ways as celery or lovage, but by the nineteenth century it was almost completely forgotten. Once a staple in Mediterranean and then British diets, Alexanders is now often referred to as the ‘lost’ or ‘forgotten’ vegetable. It’s still out there though, quietly thriving near old monasteries and castle ruins, waiting for anyone curious enough to rediscover it.
Salsify: The Victorian Oyster Plant Nobody Remembers
If you’ve never heard of salsify, you’re not alone. Salsify has a long, slender taproot with creamy flesh hidden behind a tough, usually dark-tan skin, and is sometimes called the ‘oyster plant’ because of its mild oyster-like taste. Often classified as a forgotten vegetable, wild salsify belongs to the dandelion family and comes from the Mediterranean region, where both the Ancient Greeks and the Romans gathered wild salsify.
Let’s be real, the oyster comparison is hotly debated. Salsify has a mild, earthy flavor that some liken to a combination of celeriac, asparagus, and artichokes, though some say the flavor is evocative of oysters – a claim that is hotly debated with many strongly disagreeing. Either way, it was popular enough. Salsify was on the menu at the famous New York City restaurant Delmonico’s during the late 19th century, but fell out of favor in the US in the early 20th century.
Give this Victorian-era favourite a light soil that’s free draining and it will have no problem producing its parsnip-length taproots. The root vegetables considered more visually appealing replaced it, though French and Italian farmers have cultivated it consistently since the 1600s. There’s good news for adventurous gardeners, though. Salsify really is foolproof, being easier to grow than both carrots and parsnips. Perhaps it’s time we gave this Victorian delicacy another shot.
Scorzonera: The Black Root Europe Still Remembers
Now here’s where things get interesting. Scorzonera, also called black salsify, looks intimidating. Reaching anywhere up to a meter in length, the thin black roots of scorzonera certainly represent value for money, with its name reflecting the root’s black skin, deriving from the Italian scorza negra, meaning ‘black peel’. Also commonly referred to as black salsify (Scorzonera hispanica), scorzonera root vegetables may also be called black vegetable oyster plant, serpent root, Spanish salsify, and viper’s grass, with a long, fleshy taproot much akin to that of salsify, but black on the exterior with white interior flesh.
Despite looking like something from a gothic garden, scorzonera has serious culinary credentials. In 1612, François Gentil described the Spanish salsify as the best root which can be grown in gardens, and by 1683, the use of the root as a garden vegetable is recorded in England, with Quintyne in France in 1690 calling it “one of our chiefest roots.” Louis XIV of France was very fond of it.
Black salsify is hitherto mainly a European crop, with Belgium, France and the Netherlands being the world’s largest producers. Unlike salsify, which is biennial, scorzonera is a perennial: if you end up leaving the roots in the ground one fall instead of harvesting, they just get bigger. Published consensus agrees: while both are fine, scorzonera is consistently the better-tasting and more productive. It survived better than many forgotten vegetables, but still remains largely unknown outside of certain European regions.
Sea Kale: The Coastal Delicacy That Couldn’t Travel
Picture a plant that grows wild on European beaches, thrives in salty conditions, and was so valued that Romans preserved it in barrels for sea voyages. That’s sea kale. It grows wild along the coasts of mainland Europe and the British Isles, is related to the cabbage and was first cultivated as a vegetable in Britain around the turn of the 18th century, with the blanched stems eaten as a vegetable, becoming popular in the mid-19th century.
Sea kale is mentioned in some of the earliest references to food, with the Romans preserving it in barrels for sea voyages, its high vitamin C content preventing scurvy, and was cultivated in Europe from at least the 1600s until around WWII. It was served at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton when Prince Regent George IV used it as a seaside retreat, and by the Victorian Era sea kale had become “in very general use” as a vegetable in Britain, though at nine pennies for a basket of sprouts, it was one of the most expensive vegetables to be had. Even Thomas Jefferson grew it at Monticello.
So what happened? Sea kale was once a common cultivated vegetable in France and Britain, with a small number of named varieties, but by the turn of the 21st century, there was no longer any commercial sea kale production in either country, with the reasons for its abandonment lying in difficulties adapting to modern, mechanical agriculture and the perishability of its products. Since sea kale is easily damaged in transport it is a delicacy one very rarely sees for sale. Modern supply chains killed it. Sea kale fell out of favour, but in the early 21st century, British chefs made it fashionable again, and it is commercially grown by a number of farmers in Britain.
