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At the end of the first millenium A.D., Arab agriculturalists were responsible for what one scholar called the "medieval green revolution". As a result of scientific advances in irrigation, hydrology, and horticulture, Arab farmers introduced a wide range of new vegetables into the Mediterranean, such as taro, spinach, eggplant, and artichokes. The medieval Arab rulers established royal gardens, which began as purely decorative gardens and were transformed over time into kitchen gardens that provided the Arab chefs with the raw materials for their culinary inventions.

The popular diet in medieval rural Italy consisted of more vegetables and greens grown in the kitchengarden than is popularly thought. The vegetables were eaten raw, in salads, boiled in water, fried in lard or olive oil, or mixed with small amounts of meat.

In the rest of the Europe, the situation was different. The European Mediterranean was not very much interested in vegetables in the medieval area. From mid--fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, the European diet consisted mostly of meat. Then, from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth century, the diet shifted to one of predominantly vegetables because the population recovered from the Black Death (1347-1350) and was able to bring more land under cultivation and to tend it.

Nutritionists and others have seemingly forever been trying to get people to eat more vegetables. That most famous of all vegetarians, Leonardo da Vinci was appalled by meat-eaters. In the late fifteenth century he wrote in his notebook, "Does Nature not produce enough fruits and vegetables to satiate you? If you do not content yourself with fruits and vegetables can you not by mixing them, create infinite combinations, as Planita wrote?".

Mediterranean Vegetables

The vegetable cookery of the Mediterranean is renowned, and Mediterranean peoples eat a lot of vegetables. The reasons are related to history, economics, and the development of society. In the Mediterranean, many people use meat as a kind of condiment in the flavoring of vegetables.

The popularity of vegetables has waxed and waned in all cultures over time. The Romans knew that plants received nitrogen from the air and not from the soil, and that by burying plants their nitrogen could be returned to the soil. The Romans called this process "green manuring". Green manuring was instrumental in enabling Roman farmers to successfully grow crop plants such as cabbage, along with a host of other vegetables. The writings of classical Latin authors on the plant world are voluminous.