How was rhubarb found to be edible? It certainly isn鈥檛 palatable raw.
Chris Robinson
London, UK
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As a child in the north of England, I was often kept quiet with a stick of rhubarb and a saucer of sugar: dip and bite. I imagine that the many periods of starvation in human history expanded the boundary of what is considered edible.
Robert Bernstein
Santa Barbara, California, US
In rural Connecticut as a child, our farmer neighbour gave me some of her raw rhubarb and I was delighted at the tart flavour. I only stopped eating rhubarb later when I found out that its oxalic acid can have some harmful effects.
What 鈥渋sn鈥檛 palatable鈥� for one person may be delicious to another. The mystery to me? How anyone can think that bitter cilantro (coriander) or kale belongs in food.
@asifhaidari24,
via Twitter
Rhubarb grows wild in Afghanistan. There are two types, one called rawash and the other called chukri. It is very tasty and is a good source of vitamin C.
@PostgradSlave,
via Twitter
Rhubarb is one of the first crops of early spring with a high vitamin C content. It was very important before fruit was imported.
Andy Maloney
Wellington, New Zealand
When I was travelling in the Karakoram mountains in northern Pakistan, I found rhubarb growing wild. My guides called it 鈥渟porth鈥� and ate the stems raw. They were amazed when I cooked the stems into a rhubarb crumble, as they had never heard of it being cooked.
The raw stems had a pleasant, tart acidity, though were only consumed in small quantities 鈥� presumably due to their oxalic acid content.
Jessica Hudson
Rare books librarian at the Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Library, London, UK
Historically, rhubarb was associated with medicine. Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides advocated the use of the root for stomach complaints and as a liver treatment, and it has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries.
The earliest work dedicated to rhubarb and its medicinal qualities held in the RHS Lindley Library is the 1679 book Rhabarbarologia by German physician Mathias Tiling. In 1792, Scottish physician William Fordyce wrote a treatise on the importance of the cultivation of rhubarb in England and noted that it was a cure for the luxurious excesses of the rich upper classes.
By the 1700s, the stems came into culinary use in England, but were being eaten as food far earlier in Italy and other European countries. Rhubarb was often used as an alternative to gooseberries and its increase in popularity was linked to the greater availability of sugar at the time.
Cooks experimented by using different parts of plants that were known to be medicinal through trial and error. In 1758, a cook at the Palace of Versailles in France allegedly used rhubarb leaves in a soup, unaware of their toxicity, but there are no records of what happened to the unwitting diners.
A 1739 letter sent to the Americas included a recipe for a rhubarb tart, and an early example of rhubarb in a printed recipe is in The Compleat Confectioner; or, Housekeeper鈥檚 Guide by Hannah Glasse (1760), when rhubarb鈥檚 use as food began to surpass its use in medicine.
[Ed. 鈥� Rhubarb contains , which is poisonous at high doses, though the majority is in the leaves and these aren鈥檛 usually eaten. However, due to excessive consumption of rhubarb stems have been reported.]
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