Wild Food Guide — 'X'

Welcome to the Celtnet guide to wild foods. As this recipe site has grown it has become obvious that to allow people to replicate some of the more ancient recipes on this site (especially from the Ancient, Roman and Medieval periods it is necessary to list modern alternatives but also to produce a guide so that the curious can find the original (often wild) ingredients for themselves. These pages are an attempt at bringing all these potentially useful and often forgotten wild foods together into one place. To use this guide simply click on the first letter of your term above or below. Alternativey why not just browse through the terms. You may well find something that surprises you!

This page covers wild foods beginning with the letter 'X' and includes both common and scientific names.

Xerocomus badius

Example Entry

Below, you will find an example wild food entry produced randomly from our database:

Wild Food Entry For: Chives (Wild)

This is the description page for Chives (Wild) (Allium schoenoprasum) and includes a description as well as an image, if available and a selection of recipes from this site that relates to the wild foodstuff: Chives (Wild).

Wild Chives, Allium schoenoprasum, are the is the smallest species of the Alliaceae (onion) family. The species name derives from the Greek words skhoinos (sedge) and prason (onion). Its English name, chive, derives from the French word cive, which was derived from cepa, being the Latin word for onion.

he chive is a bulb-forming herbaceous perennial plant, growing to 30-50 cm tall. The bulbs are slender conical, 2-3 cm long and 1 cm broad, and grow in dense clusters from the roots. The leaves are hollow tubular, up to 50 cm long, and 2-3 mm in diameter, with a soft texture, although, prior to the emergence of a flower from a leaf, it may appear stiffer than usual. The flowers are pale purple, star-shaped with six tepals, 1-2 cm wide, and produced in a dense inflorescence of 10-30 together; before opening, the inflorescence is surrounded by a papery bract.

The wild chive has hardly changed during the course of its domestication and the substitution of domestic or bought chives for wild chives in a recipe will not affect the flavour of a dish.

Recipes Utilizing Chives (Wild)

Wild Nettle Pudding Risotto of Nettles and Wild Herbs

You can also use the search box below to find the wild food of your choice. You can use the common name or the scientific name or any text you choose:

If you're looking for a particular recipe, or a recipe using a particular ingredient or set of ingredients, why not try my recipe search facility. You can even use a combination of period and ingredient such as 'Elizabethan Lamb' or 'medieval eggs'.