It was only later that maize, or Turkey wheat, was cultivated in the south, and that rice came into use; but these two kinds of grain, both equally useless for bread, were employed the one for fattening poultry, and the other for making cakes, which, however, were little appreciated.

[Illustration:  Fig. 78.—­Cultivation of Grain in use amongst the Peasants, and the Manufacture of Barley and Oat Bread.—­Fac-simile of a Woodcut in an edition of Virgil published at Lyons in 1517.]

Vegetables and Plants Used in Cooking.—­From the most ancient historical documents we find that at the very earliest period of the French monarchy, fresh and dried vegetables were the ordinary food of the population.  Pliny and Columella attribute a Gallic origin to certain roots, and among them onions and parsnips, which the Romans cultivated in their gardens for use at their tables.

It is evident, however, that vegetables were never considered as being capable of forming solid nutriment, since they were almost exclusively used by monastic communities when under vows of extreme abstinence.

A statute of Charlemagne, in which the useful plants which the emperor desired should be cultivated in his domains are detailed, shows us that at that period the greater part of our cooking vegetables were in use, for we find mentioned in it, fennel, garlic, parsley, shallot, onions, watercress, endive, lettuce, beetroot, cabbage, leeks, carrots, artichokes; besides long-beans, broad-beans, peas or Italian vetches, and lentils.

In the thirteenth century, the plants fit for cooking went under the general appellation of aigrun, and amongst them, at a later date, were ranked oranges, lemons, and other acid fruits.  St. Louis added to this category even fruits with hard rinds, such as walnuts, filberts, and chestnuts; and when the guild of the fruiterers of Paris received its statutes in 1608, they were still called “vendors of fruits and aigrun.”

The vegetables and cooking-plants noticed in the “Menagier de Paris,” which dates from the fourteenth century, and in the treatise “De Obsoniis,” of Platina (the name adopted by the Italian Bartholomew Sacchi), which dates from the fifteenth century, do not lead us to suppose that alimentary horticulture had made much progress since the time of Charlemagne.  Moreover, we are astonished to find the thistle placed amongst choice dishes; though it cannot be the common thistle that is meant, but probably this somewhat general appellation refers to the vegetable-marrow, which is still found on the tables of the higher classes, or perhaps the artichoke, which we know to be only a kind of thistle developed by cultivation, and which at that period had been recently imported.

About the same date melons begin to appear; but the management of this vegetable fruit was not much known.  It was so imperfectly cultivated in the northern provinces, that, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Bruyerin Champier speaks of the Languedocians as alone knowing how to produce excellent sucrins—­“thus called,” say both Charles Estienne and Liebault in the “Maison Rustique,” “because gardeners watered them with honeyed or sweetened water.”  The water-melons have never been cultivated but in the south.