Zucchino

After a prolonged session with a cookbook, she selected two or three recipes she considered promising, went to her grocer’s, and read off her list of ingredients: a quarter pound of white seedless grapes, three oranges, two tart apples, three cloves, the breast of a chicken, a can of pigs’ feet, a spring onion, a zucchino, three leeks, and a half pint of dried black-eyed peas. The grocer paled as he listened. “Lady,” he said, “what are you making—a painting?”

Two members of another family became ill after eating a zucchino—a marrow-like plant grown in their garden; a bitter ether-soluble substance was extracted from a sample of the vegetable (Frizelle 1961).

A zucchino is a small marrow, but there can be no connection with Shelley’s ‘The Zucca’, which was not drafted until 1821.