The Search for A Welsh Leek

However, when looking at the two records of the wearing of leeks in battle, it seems that those arguing for the leek as a Welsh emblem displayed horticultural ignorance. The Battle of Crécy took place on 26 August 1346, when cultivated leeks would have been no thicker than a pencil and thus an insignificant emblem. Nonetheless, King Henry V’s troops, we are expected to believe, had the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of their Celtic forebears and stick a leek in their caps. In early March, however, when King Cadwallon was at war, leeks would have looked magnificent! For the sake of botanical clarity, one should remember that the Welsh leek of the seventh century would almost certainly have been introduced by the Romans, whose love of all alliums, including leeks, is discussed later. It is most unlikely to have been the wild type which, even back then, was only found growing in rocky and remote corners of the west coast of Wales.

In her wonderful book The Origin of Plants, Maggie Campbell-Culver reminds us that the entire native population of Britain, following the Roman occupation, would not have made a distinction between the vegetable garden and farmland used for cultivating crops. Life was a matter of survival and the entire community would be focused on finding and growing enough food just to stay alive. Only monks and a few scholars could read and write, and even they spent most of their time growing and foraging. Unlike today’s common expression of a kitchen garden as being ‘the cabbage patch’, at the time St David was battling the Saxon invaders the description of a place where vegetables were grown was the Leac-garth (herb garden), Leac meaning ‘herb’ in Anglo-Saxon. There would seem little doubt, therefore, that leeks were an important part of Anglo-Saxon food culture. Our obsession with this allium continues to this day, as is evident from its importance on the show-bench. Perhaps the literal translation of the location of the battle led by King Cadwallon – an unidentified field of leeks somewhere in South Wales – says more about the vegetable’s place in Welsh culture than what actual species the Welsh and their hated Saxon enemies could have been trampling over when they helped themselves from some impoverished peasant’s vegetable patch. In any event, the leeks those brave soldiers fighting for Henry V wore would have been a French variety, the result of a thousand years of cultivation after the fall of Rome and a distant relation of the common leek we enjoy today.

No Wild Side

Unlike many of the vegetable characters I write about, although domesticated from the wild leek, the cultivated leek is known botanically as a cultigen – a term used to describe a cultivated plant lacking wild counterparts. This is because domestication and selective breeding over many thousands of years has given the world a species that is now quite distinct from its wild ancestors.

Records indicate that the cultivated or common leek was domesticated in Egypt and Mesopotamia at least 4,500 years ago. However, as the wild leek is native to all the countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, as well as the western and northern parts of the Fertile Crescent, it would most likely have been foraged by our ancestors long after it was domesticated. It is considered naturalised in northern Europe, including parts of the U.K., throughout Indo-China and, as a result of European colonisation in the last 600 years, much of Australia and parts of the North and South American continents.

The long process of domestication has given us a number of distinct forms which have embedded themselves in several different food cultures. Wild leeks are onion-like in appearance, with small bulbs or clusters of bulbs at their base. Domesticated leeks are divided into five distinct groups, from which several different types were perfected: the Com- mon Leek, the Greater-headed Garlic, the Pearl Onion, the Kurrat, and the Taree or Persian Leek.

It is the changes in the concentric, unsheathing leaf base that were selected by farmers to create long, edible pseudo-stems. These are false stems formed from the swollen leaf base which we associate with the distinctive appearance of the common leek.4 Elephant garlic is a member of the Greater-headed Garlic group and those of us who have grown and eaten it will attest to it looking more like a giant garlic bulb than a type of leek. Only when eaten does its leek-like flavour come through, and those expecting the pungency of real garlic will be disappointed. Ditto a close Chinese relative, the Pearl Onion, which is known as a button baby onion in the U.K. and a creamer in the USA. Frequently sold as a pickled onion, it is, in fact, a type of pickled leek! The other two, the Kurrat and the Taree, look similar to the common leek. The former is the result of selection from forms of wild garlic, with an emphasis on the leaves, and remains popular in Egypt today. It’s very much a ‘cut-and-come-again’ crop, harvested every few weeks until the plant is exhausted – which can take over a year. The Taree is very similar to the Kurrat, but with narrower leaves, and is a popular ingredient in the cuisine of northern Iran. Seed from the Greater-headed Garlic group is infertile, but the other four groups are interfertile and will readily cross with each other, producing hybrids of variable culinary worth.

There are other alliums called wild leeks, which are an entirely different species. I think of the American wild leek, A. tricoccum, commonly known as ramps, which is foraged in the spring and sold at farmers markets. It is rather yummy and, confusingly, looks like the unrelated wild garlic A. ursinum which I forage near my home. Also known as ramsons, wild garlic is a wonderful, sweet-smelling sight in springtime when great drifts can be seen in British woodland glades and along rural roadside verges.

Food Stories

Thousands of years before the Welsh started to squabble over the cultural significance and merit of the humble leek, it had cemented a place in the earliest recipes of the eastern Mediterranean. The stories of the leek’s journey onto our plates are closely entwined with those of its two cousins, garlic and onion. They are referenced on Sumerian Cuneiform tablets, nearly 4,500 years old, along with other culinary essentials. Tablets from Mesopotamia, dating back to between 1600 and 1700 bce, and known as the Yale Babylonian Tablets, probably represent the oldest cookery book in the world and include around 40 recipes in which the Allium genus figures large. On the tablets, the leek – most probably the Taree – is called karsu. It would appear that the civilisations of Mesopotamia liked to cook leeks and garlic together purely for nourishment, as there is no record of them having any medicinal or magical properties. In the Old Testament there is a description of foodie pleasures lost to the Israelites who, while wandering the desert with Moses, thought of the good things they had left behind: ‘…We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic…’ (Numbers 11:4–6).

It would appear that the Egyptians also enjoyed their leeks, which would have included the Kurrat, and even venerated them. They appear on hieroglyphics and on the head or in the hand of the god Osiris. The Roman emperor Nero (37–68 ce) may have died young, but I doubt this can be blamed on his love of leeks. Like St David, who believed eating leeks helped lubricate his larynx, Nero would regularly eat large quantities to help his singing voice. As a result, he was given the nick-name Porrophagus – ‘leek-eater’ in Latin – an insulting term from an ungrateful empire. Like so many vegetables that are at the heart of European cuisine today thanks to the Romans, the domesticated leek was grown across their empire.

Anglo-Saxon Europe embraced the cultivated leek. Nutritious and a reliable, hardy crop, it could be harvested from late autumn to late spring and would have been part of a daily diet, which is why it has such an important place in our folklore and literature. Eating leeks also had negative connotations. A century or more ago, derogatory comments about people being ‘as green as a leek’, or something being ‘not worth a leek’, were a regular part of English vernacular.5 As well as praising the Welsh in the Battle of Crécy, in one scene in Henry V, Shakespeare has the Welsh character Fluellen force his English compatriot Pistol to eat a leek because ‘If you can mock a leek you can eat a leek.’

On a more positive note, it is not just the Welsh but also the Romanians who have the leek as a bedrock of their cultural identity; the Scots do, too. One just has to think of Cock-a-Leekie soup, a meal in itself, with many regional variations that all include leeks. The other quintessential Scottish dish is porridge, the name being a combination of the word ‘pottage’ and the French word porée. The Latin word for leek, porrum, became poireau in French and Porree or Lauch in German. Porrum was first used to describe a thick, leek-based vegetable soup like Cock-a-Leekie, which became extended to describe any glutinous and soupy dish made using dried peas or oatmeal.6

A Never-Ending Search

I have been on a quest to find a genuine leek that was first bred in Wales – the John and Jane Doe of the vegetable world: missing, but hopefully not deceased. This has only got me as far as the 1939 Carter’s Blue Book of Gardening seed catalogue where five varieties of leek are listed. In very small print at the bottom of the page is evidence that it did once exist: ‘The Welsh Leek…A fine improved variety of the old WELSH’ [their capitals] for the princely sum of 10d [4 new pence] an ounce [25g]’. Sadly, no longer available to buy anywhere.

This, the most recent reference I have been able to find of a commercial Welsh leek, is proof enough that they were commonly available before World War II. Despite extensive research and endless enquires to leek growers across Wales there is no evidence to suggest a local heritage or heirloom leek has ever been bred. However, my search for this elusive vegetable continues. Maybe in some forgotten corner of a garden shed in deepest Wales a Carter’s seed packet still survives…

Notes

Recommended Reads

Leeks: The Ultimate Winter Crop

Becoming A True Seed Detective: Mastering the Mission