Sea Kale with Melted Butter Sauce

The Victorians ate a much wider variety of fruit and vegetables than we do. Houses such as Audley End had kitchen gardens and orchards, staffed by a team of highly skilled gardeners. It was a mark of wealth to showcase unusual produce, which was hard to grow out of season (forced if early, retarded if late) or very rare. Sea kale is abundant along the coastlines of Britain, where it grows wild, but in a domesticated context is now very rare. In Avis’ time it was grown under large forcing po