Cucumber Cucumis sativus Cucumber is one of the oldest plants known to man and one with which he has enjoyed an almost constant love-hate relationship. It is a native of southern India and cultivated for the last 4,000 years or so. The Children of Israel bemoaned their lot after leaving Mount Sinai, declaring that they missed the cucumber which they had eaten so freely in the land of Egypt (Numbers, 11:5) . Isaiah (1:8). on the other hand, seems to see it in a different light, likening the daughter of Zion to ‘a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city.’ The Greek and Roman cultures were apparently very fond of the cucumber, Theophrastus mentioning three varieties which were grown in Greece during his time, and Apicius uses them as a patina, or paste, in salads and as a vegetable. The Emperor Tiberius was fond of them and insisted on having them, home grown, in moveable frames. They came to France in the 9th century, taking their time to get across the Channel, reaching us in around the mid-14th century and where, for at least five centuries, they were regarded with a great deal of suspicion. The Columbian Exchange, meanwhile, saw the cucumber travelling the Atlantic, with Columbus taking the cucumber to Haiti on his trip of 1494. The vegetable can hardly have been a surprise to the New World, as several members of the same family, Curcubita; pumpkin, squash and pattypan were already well established as food crops. John Gerard, author of Herball, or General Historie of Plantes in 1597 saw the healing potential in cucumber and recommended eating a pottage, or soup, made with cucumber and oatmeal three times a day, to combat a fiery and pimply complexion, to be accompanied by a treatment using a facewash, the principle constituent of which was cucumber. Culpeper, who intertwined his herbalism with astrology, assigned the cucumber to the moon - cooling and healing and herballists, even now recommend a slice of cucumber to take away the initial sting, and bring down the skin temperature, after a minor burn. As an object of culinary desire, however, it was making less of an impact. A sixteenth century axiom reflected the opinion of a great many that cucumber could be positively fatal: “Raw cucumber makes the churchyards prosperous.” They didn’t receive any better press by the time of Boswell. In his The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., James Boswell reflects upon the cucumber: “it has been a common saying of physicians in England, that a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.” Ironically, the English, who maintained until quite recently that the cucumber was tasteless and indigestible, placed the cucumber at the very core of that very English institution, ‘High Tea’. Sliced ultra-thinly, settling like gauze between barely buttered leaves of crustless bread they provide the centrepiece, even now, of such famous gatherings as the Buckingham Palace garden parties. Ayurveda sees cucumber, called soukas in Sanskrit, as cooling, and many a spicy Indian meal has benefited from the foil of sliced cucumber, nestling in a cooling yoghurt, as a natural foil to the more piquant spicing. The seeds are also used in Ayurveda to expel tapeworm. Unani Tibb recommends it for kidney and heart problems and credits it with being able to dissolve the uric acid accumulations which lead to kidney and bladder stones. Cucumber is, botanically: a berry; a simple fleshy fruit, enclosing a seed (or seeds), not having a separate, peelable skin. It contains sterols, mainly in the skin, which have been shown to lower bad cholesterol when tested on laboratory animals.