A Lettuce by Any Other Name

Stories

Apr 27

(just wouldn’t taste the same)

story by Donna Hecker & photography by Talitha Schroeder

My earliest memory of lettuce with actual flavor was biting into a leaf of Bibb, sprinkled with salt. Not flakes of hand-raked Fleur de Sel or fine grains of Himalayan pink or even kosher crystals, but ordinary iodized table salt from the blue canister so ubiquitous in my 1960s childhood.

I ate that lettuce leaf on a family visit with old friends in northern Kentucky, who had grown it in their garden. Before then, I’d only experienced the soulless crunch of iceberg left to languish at the local A&P. Bibb was a revelation — tender, yet tasting of sunlight and the color green. I wouldn’t know such freshness again until my thirties, when a San Francisco waiter set a plate of field greens down, the leaves so delicately dressed I ate them with my fingers. And was reminded of my first taste of Bibb.

By the time I’d traveled to San Francisco, I knew where Bibb lettuce came from. It came from my hometown of Frankfort, the Kentucky state capital. Frankfort is littered with historical markers and one of them stands in front of a weathered Gothic, crowned with a trio of gables and wreathed in gingerbread. The marker commemorates the Bibb-Burnley House, birthplace of Bibb lettuce.

Also known as Gray Gables, the house was built by Major John Bibb in 1857. John Bibb had fought with General Isaac Shelby in the War of 1812; and served as both a representative and a senator in the Kentucky General Assembly. His more famous brother was George Mortimer Bibb, who had been a lawyer at the Supreme Court bar, a pro-slavery US Senator, and President John Tyler’s Treasury Secretary.

Their father was Richard Bibb, a Revolutionary War officer who became a Methodist minister after moving to Kentucky. He was heavily involved with the American Colonization Movement and in 1831, he emancipated 31 of his enslaved workers and arranged their passage to Africa, on a cholera-ravaged ship to a land they’d never known.

When Major Richard Bibb died in 1839, his will stipulated that his remaining enslaved workers be freed, compensated from a fund of $5000; and awarded tools, livestock and shares of roughly 3000 acres. The execution of Major Bibb’s will became a case study of estate law and the barriers faced by freed Blacks in Kentucky; and his wishes were not completely carried out until 1881, well after the Civil War and Emancipation.

John Bibb died a few years later at the age of 94. By that time, he had earned a reputation as a skilled horticulturist. One success was a new lettuce variety, cultivated in the limestone soil of his garden on the banks of the Kentucky River. The lettuce was a hit with Frankfort society and John handed out its seeds as a sort of calling card when visiting friends and family.

John’s death might also have been the end of Bibb lettuce but for a couple of teenage girls. In early 20th century Louisville, Viola Genenwein, the daughter of a greenhouse owner, tasted it at the home of a friend whose father was a horse trainer. According to later accounts, she was so impressed by its deliciousness that she talked her father into adding it to his greenhouse.

The two men were introduced, a bottle of bourbon and a few seeds changed hands, and William Genenwein’s “fancy lettuce” was soon identified by a Louisville greengrocer as the same Bibb lettuce he used to procure from a Frankfort gardener. The Genenwein Greenhouse went on to enjoy a virtual monopoly on Bibb lettuce for many years, and it became a fixture at Derby celebrations.

Bibb lettuce fell out of favor for a while with the proliferation of interstate trucking and restaurant salad bars, which both required tougher, bulkier greens. Eventually growers developed effective hydroponic systems and Bibb was back in the game, albeit without the distinctive flavor imparted by putting down roots in limestone soil. According to the Slow Food Foundation, the original field version of Limestone Bibb is now at risk.

So we were excited when our DirtWorks gardener at Holly Hill Inn planted a couple rows of Bibb in our backyard Buddha garden. It’s been a battle with the bunnies but with any luck we’ll be able to harvest a few of the emerald heads in time for Derby and Mother’s Day menus.

And when we do, here’s how we’ll proceed: gently twist or cut out the core and then, keeping the head as intact as possible, rinse it under cool running water or swish in a bowl full of water. We’ll pat the leaves dry with a clean towel and loosely wrap them until ready to plate. It’s fun to follow Julia Child’s example of reconstructing the Bibb into a rosette before (lightly) dressing it. If your Bibb was garden-grown you might want to just savor it on its own. It also pairs well with other springtime treats like sweet-tart strawberries, slender green onions, and zippy radishes.

________________________________

Post-script: We drove by the Bibb House again the other day. Parked out front and walked around back to measure the distance to the river and imagine where the greenhouse and garden might have been. And thought about the five rooms out of its 21 that were occupied by servants. We know that Major Bibb owned nearly four dozen enslaved persons when he moved to Frankfort in 1857. We don’t know whether he inherited his father’s acquired aversion to slavery and was moved to free any of them before President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. For more information about the Bibb family and their enslaved workers, and the legacy of both, here are several good resources –

The bitter harvest of Richard Bibb: A descendant of slavery confronts her inheritance

invented before you were born- a documentary

STUFF you missed in History Class - PodCast

The SEEK museum