Ye Stinking Herbe

Part of my dissertation involved immersing myself in the history of plants that have been adopted as crops outside their country of origin – novel crops, as I referred to them. It’s a long history, with recorded attempts to move plants from one place to another going back as far as the ancient Egyptians. Even before that, probably for as long as we’ve been human, we have been moving plants around, whether by accident or design.

My dissertation explored the reasons behind the movement of plants, and some of it is tied up in food fashions, which can come and go remarkably quickly. These days we get bombarded by food adverts, telling us what we should eat Marmite’s “Love it or Hate it” marketing campaign always misses the mark for me, as I’m ambivalent towards it. I don’t mind eating it occasionally, but I wouldn’t bother buying myself a jar. I feel the same about coriander leaf (the herb Americans call cilantro), but I know that it evokes strong feelings in other people. If you’re one of the people who finds that Coriandrum sativum tastes like soap, then you can relax and chalk that one up to your genes.

I did a little digging and found a New York Times article that referred to the work of Professor Helen Leach, at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Professor Leach’s work covers the history of horticulture and gardening, domestication of plants and animals, and food. The article mentioned that she wrote a paper called Rehabilitating the “Stinking Herbe”: A Case Study of Culinary Prejudice, which I wanted to read, but to which I didn’t have access. I sent an email to Professor Leach, asking for advice on where to find it, and went back to working on my dissertation.

Very quickly (especially when you consider the different