Food - Drink
The German Salad Linked To A Classic Fairy Tale
By CHRIS SANDS
Among popular salad greens, there’s one that exists under a bewildering variety of names. The scientific name for this lettuce-like green is Valerianella locusta, in Germany it’s known as feldsalat (literally, “field salad”), while the most popular name associated with this green might be Rapunzel.
The story of Rapunzel was famously published in 1812 as one of a series of fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, and concerns a girl who is locked in a tower by an evil witch. When the story begins, the unborn Rapunzel is traded to the witch by her parents in exchange for lamb’s lettuce, aka Valerianella locusta.
Rapunzel lettuce isn’t named after the fairy tale, but rather the other way around. We suppose the moral of the story is that Rapunzel’s parents understood the nutritional value of a good salad; luckily, you can easily enjoy Rapunzel in a salad today without any outlandish fairytale trade-offs.