John Ash

The World of Eggplant

Appears in
From the Earth to the Table
From the Earth to the Table

By John Ash

Published 1995

  • About

If you need another reason to be glad you live in the twenty-first century, consider what people used to think about eggplant. “Doubtless these apples have a mischievous quality,” wrote Englishman John Gerard in his 1597 Herball. “Eat at your own risk,” he warned.

And he wasn’t alone. The French suspected the curvaceous eggplant of causing epilepsy and fevers and disdained it until the nineteenth century. And although the ever-curious Thomas Jefferson grew eggplant at Monticello, Americans didn’t really embrace it until the modern wave of immigrants—southern Italians, Chinese, Middle Easterners, and Indians—showed us irresistible ways to prepare it.