The Landreth Seed Company: Testing Ground for a New American Cuisine

摘要

It was none other than the venerable editors of Scientific American who in 1882 observed: "Landreth & Sons have done more to improve the taste for fine vegetables than any other parties in the Union, and from the manner in which the firm goes steadilyforward, yearly increasing the shipments by tons upon tons, their future will be still more remarkable success than their past and present." The story of Philadelphia's Landreth Seed Company offers an important chapter in American horticultural historyas well as major contributions to a distinctly American cuisine. We do not normally think of seed companies in connection with cookery—as basic as this connection may be—yet in a real sense they are (or were) incubators for new types of food plants, the basic stuff of our culinary palette if you think of ingredients as the color-key that gives character to cuisine. On this point alone, the Landreth family was at the forefront in creative plant breeding: many of the food plants they introduced are nowwell-known and highly valued heirlooms still grown and sold in local farm markets.