scribed here
as a great restorative to consumptive patients. The bread of Nice is
very indifferent, and I am persuaded very unwholesome. The flour is
generally musty, and not quite free of sand. This is either owing to
the particles of the mill-stone rubbed off in grinding, or to what
adheres to the corn itself, in being threshed upon the common ground;
for there are no threshing-floors in this country. I shall now take
notice of the vegetables of Nice. In the winter, we have green pease,
asparagus, artichoaks, cauliflower, beans, French beans, celery, and
endive; cabbage, coleworts, radishes, turnips, carrots, betteraves,
sorrel lettuce, onions, garlic, and chalot. We have potatoes from the
mountains, mushrooms, champignons, and truffles. Piedmont affords white
truffles, counted the most delicious in the world: they sell for about
three livres the pound. The fruits of this season are pickled olives,
oranges, lemons, citrons, citronelles, dried figs, grapes, apples,
pears, almonds, chestnuts, walnuts, filberts, medlars, pomegranates,
and a fruit called azerolles, [The Italians call them Lazerruoli.]
about the size of a nutmeg, of an oblong shape, red colour, and
agreeable acid taste. I might likewise add the cherry of the Laurus
cerasus, which is sold in the market; very beautiful to the eye, but
insipid to the palate. In summer we have all those vegetables in
perfection. There is also a kind of small courge, or gourd, of which
the people of the country make a very savoury ragout, with the help of
eggs, cheese, and fresh anchovies. Another is made of the badenjean,
which the Spaniards call berengena: [This fruit is called Melanzana in
Italy and is much esteemed by the Jews in Leghorn. Perhaps Melanzana is
a corruption of Malamsana.] it is much eaten in Spain and the Levant,
as well as by the Moors in Barbary. It is about the size and shape of a
hen's egg, inclosed in a cup like an acorn; when ripe, of a faint
purple colour. It grows on a stalk about a foot high, with long spines
or prickles. The people here have different ways of slicing and
dressing it, by broiling, boiling, and stewing, with other ingredients:
but it is at best an insipid dish. There are some caperbushes in this
neighbourhood, which grow wild in holes of garden walls, and require no
sort of cultivation: in one or two gardens, there are palm-trees; but
the dates never ripen. In my register of the weather, I have marked the
seasons of the principal fruit