Encomium brassicarum sive caulium

de Laigue, Étienne de seigneur de Beaulvais, Chrestien Wechel

"Only edtion of the Bourges-born avocational naturalist Étienne de Laigue's treatise on the cabbage, the earliest known book devoted exclusively to the characteristics, preparation, and medical properties of the lowly brassica. Written as a trialogue between a professor, a physician, and a cook (orator, physicus, & coquus), the text follows the form of a mock encomium, or "paradoxical praise," a popular genre during the period, but in fact does not mock at all, but rather celebrates and elevates the cabbage as an important constituent of the Renaissance cook's pantry, the consumer's diet, and the physician's armamentarium. Laigue, by profession an ambassador for François Ier, was a self-taught naturalist and scholar of Pliny; he wrote several commentaries on the Natural History. In [this] book, Laigue refers frequently to the writings of Apicius, Nicander of Colophon, Theophrastus, Hippocrates, Galen, and Varro, as well as the Greek comic writer Epicharmus, for whom the cabbage was evidently an object of light ridicule. The textual discussion in the Encomium brassicarum is led by the professor, who invites commentary from the physician on the medical properties of cabbage, alternating with gastronomic tidbits from the chef, and both contribute to the body of botanical knowledge of our salient biennial vegetable. In 1530, the year before the Encomium was published, Laigue wrote a short treatise in French on frogs, turtles, snails, and artichokes; both that work and [this] book are avidly recherché among collectors of curious early gastronomical texts."--