Accepting Asparagus

"Marriage? It's like asparagus eaten with vanaigrette or hollandaise, a matter of taste but no importance," opined Françoise Sagan (1935-2004), French playwright and screenwriter of Bonjour Tristesse. Nevertheless, the French have had a thing for asparagus ever since it infiltrated their border with Spain following the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsular.

Of uncertain origin, Asparagus officinalis was likely native to the littoral of the eastern Mediterranean into Asia Minor. Certainly, it was eaten by the Greeks. So much did the Romans admire the 'spears' that they coined an expression, "quicker than it takes to cook asparagus" for chores that required rapid undertaking. With the collapse of Rome, anyhow, asparagus disappeared from Western cuisine for a millennium while remaining popular in the Middle East before returning to the West and, particularly, Gallic gastronomes. Prosper Montagné explained his 1938 tome Larousse Gastronomique, the world authority on food, wine and cooking: In France, asparagus came into vogue during the reign of Louis XIV, thanks to Quintinie, who was the first to use asparagus beds to cater for the tastes of Le Roi Soleil. He was thus able to supply the royal kitchen with asparagus all the year round. So much did the court of the Sun King enjoy this dish that the Royal Gardener Jean de La Quintinie was forced to nurture no less than 6,000 asparagus plants in the Potager du Roi at Versailles. France being France, and the French the French, it was the successor to Le Roi Soleil whose mistress attained immortality in asparagus, if in nothing else. Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Madame de Pompadour (1721-64) becane mistress at age 24 to Louis XV (1710-74). Convinced that asparagus would assist the royal member and well as members, she fed it to her paramour on every possible occasion. This culminated in that classic dish Asperges à la Pompadour, served with a sauce of butter, flour, nutmeg, egg yolk, lemon juice. Whether it left Louis XV any nimbler remains unknown although he fathered at least 14 children, but Madame de Pompadour succumbed from tuberculosis aged just 43, ten years before the king. The French champagne glass, coup de champagne, was supposedly modelled on the shape of her breasts. One expert has said, rather ungallantly, that if this was so then French men must have liked both their women and champagne flat.

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Asparagus reached England by the sixteenth century. During the following hundred years it was being raised commercially. It was not until the late 1800s, nonetheless, that it was popularized as a favourite of Queen Victoria's son, Edward, Prince of Wales--along with strawberries. Later to become Edward VII, he established entente cordial, much appreciating both French fare and fairer sex. Asparagus was a labour-intensive, laborious crop and so largely limited to the tables of the rich. Thanks to air transportation and modern production techniques this is no longer so. Still, it is not exactly cheap and imported quality questionable. Thus, some keen gardeners desiring to become gourmet descendants of royalty, choose to establish their own plantings. Since asparagus beds have been known to remain productive for a century or more, some work is initially necessary--perhaps more than most envisage. Choose a bright, sunny location in well-drained soil free from competing tree or shrub roots. For a double row prepare a trench, three feet (a metre) wide, a foot (30cm) deep. Spread composted animal manure on the bottom and fork over. Backfill with soil/composted manure or triple mix to ground level, tamp down to 4 to 6 inches from surface and apply a generous amount of bone meal fertilizer. Space asparagus crowns 6 inches (15cm) from sides of trench, a foot (30cm) apart; cover with 3 inches (7cm) of soil/compost or triple mix; as shoots ('spears') emerge fill in the more soil mix. For the first season, weekly weeding is advisable. One of the reasons for commercial asparagus' high price is that, left to itself, the plant is dioecious, that is, having separate male and female plants. Since the female plants are less productive, older selections such as the venerable 'Martha Washington' are half female, half male. Newer cultivars are almost all higher-yielding male, such as Jersey Giant, Jersey Knight, and Jersey Prince. Suggests Richters of A. officinalis 'Jersey Giant': Plant this year and harvest your first crop next spring! Male variety are 35% more productive than other "co-ed" varieties. About 95% of plants are male. Not surprisingly, the sexual orientation of asparagus has attracted researchers. Working with an international team of breeders and genome scientists, plant biologists at the University of Georgia have sequence the genome of garden asparagus as a model for sex chromosome evolution. Their study appeared in the journal Nature Communications. More down-to-earth advice emanated with the American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey (1918-2009) who drew a comparison when he recommended: "Government has to be cut back like asparagus . . . every day . . . or it gets away and goes to seed."