Artichoke:

What is it?, history, cultivation, nutritional value, uses, recipes, and more...

The first references to the artichoke can be found in engravings in the pyramids of Egypt. It is also known that the Greeks were already familiar with and used it as both medicine and a love elixir. The Roman writer Columella, an agronomist of ancient Rome, explained in his work “De re rustica” that cynaras can be planted at two different times in the same year and that they should be fertilized with ashes.

Its scientific name, “Cynara scolymus,” comes from a Greek myth that explains the origin of this fruit. The myth narrates how Zeus once visited the Island of Cynara, where he discovered a beautiful young woman named Cynara lying on the beach. He fell madly in love with her and took her to Mount Olympus, where he made her a goddess. However, Cynara soon grew tired of this paradise and returned to her native island. Enraged, Zeus caused hard green leaves to grow on her body, enclosing her heart in the center.

While the artichoke was already known in the Iberian Peninsula during Roman times, it was the Arabs who popularized its consumption and cultivation, as reported in the “Book of Agriculture” by agronomist Ibn-aI-Awam (12th century).

During the Middle Ages, the plant went virtually unnoticed, but its reputation as an aphrodisiac food was not forgotten, and young women in their “marriageable age” were forbidden to consume it. It is believed that during this time, horticulturists who cultivated cardoons transformed them into the artichoke we know today.

The artichoke was already consumed in Italy in the 15th century. According to tradition, it was the Florentine Catherine de’ Medici, who enjoyed eating artichoke hearts, who introduced the plant to France when she married Henry II. The queen adored its flavor and considered it aphrodisiac, so she taught how to prepare it in a stew called “beatilles,” which was cooked with cock’s crests, kidneys, and sweetbreads. This stew became very popular because it was believed to have greater aphrodisiac properties than any love potion.

Later, it was the Spanish and French colonists in America who introduced it to this continent.

This vegetable is also part of popular culture in many parts of the world. It has been the subject of sayings, riddles, children’s stories, games, poems, and more.

For example, in “Elemental Odes” (1945), Pablo Neruda includes the “Ode to the Artichoke,” which begins as follows:

“The artichoke

with tender heart

dressed up as a warrior,

erect, it built

a little dome,

kept itself

impregnable

beneath

its armoured leaves…”

Likewise, Argentine writer Julio Cortázar includes an artichoke clock in his story “Relojes” (“Clocks”) from the book “Historias de Cronopios y de Famas” (“Cronopios and Famas”), in which a “cronopio” (a drawing outside the margins, a poem without rhymes) invents an artichoke clock that hangs on the wall, and its leaves indicate the present hours.