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Article: The world on a string.(celery)
- Article from:
- Art Culinaire
- Article date:
- March 22, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Culinaire, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I. ANCIENT ROOTS
AMONG ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS, CELERY was considered a gift from the gods. Its purported medicinal properties were countless, and occasionally contradictory: while ancient Egyptians boiled celery with oil and sweet beer to create a contraceptive potion, the Greeks felt that the vegetable on its own increased a woman's fertility. Byzantine records, on the other hand, reflect a belief that celery reduced both sexual inhibition and the volume of milk produced by lactating women. In Greco-Roman antiquity, celery was associated with Pluto, master of the underworld, whom grieving Romans hoped to appease by weaving funeral wreaths from celery leaves and ...