Salads

Although uncooked, salads are considered here for convenience. The eating of raw fruits and herbs was not recommended, John Russell warning diners to, ⁷⁶

beware of saladis, grene metis, & of frutes rawe

for they make many a man haue a feble mawe [stomach].

Therfore, of suche fresch lustes set not an hawe,

For suche wantoun appetites ar not worth a strawe.

Considering the well-known virtues of herbs, this was an apparently paradoxical opinion, but probably based on experience. With the partial exception of fruits, virtually everything eaten or drunk in medieval England was sterilized by the heat of cooking, and therefore safe to eat. Herbs gathered from the fields, and perhaps rinsed in unboiled water, did not have this protection, and so may well have caused stomach upsets, and ‘make your sovrayne sike’.⁷⁷