Hey, it's summer. I'll plant some nice dainty salad greens in the
garden. What could go wrong? Well, I'll show you what could go wrong.
This salad is hot, it's spicy, incredibly pungent. I feel like I have smoke coming out of my nostrils
right now because this is arugula, and it is much, much stronger than the arugula that you normally
get at the grocery store, or rocket, as the Brits would call it. Let's dispense with the etymology
before we get to the chemistry. Believe it or not, rocket and arugula are the same word. Rocket and
arugula are both just different evolutions of the same Latin word for this stuff, which is eruca.
Eruca sativa is the scientific name for it. Eruca became the Italian word rucola, which is what they
call it in Italy today, and you can hear how it sounds a lot like the American name, arugula.
You got to remember that most Italians in the United States came fleeing extreme poverty in
Southern Italy. That's where my ancestors are from, from the heel of the boot there,
the Puglia region. The toe of the boot is Calabria, and it seems to have been the
Calabrians who introduced arugula to the US, or at least the Calabrians introduced
the name. Here's the Oxford English Dictionary. Arugula is from the Calabrian variant of rucola,
which is aruculu. I don't know, or maybe arucilu or arucula. Easy to imagine how arucula would
change into a arugula given a few decades of life here in the United States. Indeed, here is a 1960
New York Times article. Italian chefs know arugula or rocket, call it what you will, is the secret
ingredient of many of their salads-about-town. I love it when my salad goes out on the town,
it always comes back smelling like taxi. I doubt it's an accident that a New York Times writer in
particular wanted to acknowledge the existence of an American and a British pronunciation of this
word. New York Times readers then as now like to fancy themselves as somewhat transatlantic,
right? And rocket is the European word. It's actually from France. Don't you know? OED says,
rocket comes from the French roquette, which in turn comes from the Northern Italian versions
of rucola, like there's this Venetian version rochetta, which is only one letter away from
a different Italian word. This one meaning a cylindrical projectile that got anglicized into
rocket, spelled and pronounced exactly like the vegetable, even though roquette and rockets are
very different things with different etymologies. The point is roquette is the fancier version. It's
the Northern Italian-French-English version of the word for this stuff. Arugula is a word
more like gabagool, right? It's that kind of mumbled, garbled, greasy, Southern Italian poor
version filtered through the New York area where all of those people settled. Again,
including my people. Arugula is the working class name for this veg here in the States,
which makes it kind of ironic how in more recent years, arugula has become an emblem of elitism
in America, people think of it as the food of those who can afford personal dieticians. I mean,
arugula is legit extremely healthy. I'm not going to eat this every day. I'm just not. So, that's
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code ADAMRAGUSEA20 at checkout. Thank you Ritual. Anyway, arugula or rocket or whatever you want to
call it, what is it? How did salad become spicy? Arugula is spicy hot for the same reason that
mustard seeds are spicy hot. Both plants are Brassicas. Mustard greens, arugula, broccoli,
cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, horseradish, those are all just radically
different cultivars of the same wild ancestor, the mother Brassica. One thing all Brassicas
have in common is they produce chemicals called glucosinolates. That's a glucose group on the left
and an amino acid group on the right. And check all the sulfur. That's why arugula at its worst
just kind of tastes like a hot fart. When you eat arugula, you break down the cell walls and
you bring the glucosinolates into contact with an enzyme the plant makes called myrosinase, which
converts the glucosinolates into isothiocyanates, I think. And it's the isothiocyanates that
actually tickle pain receptors that are on your tongue and your mouth and up in your nose.
Same way capsaicin does, the stuff that's in chilies. The practical difference being that
capsaicin has a stronger sensitizing effect, meaning the pain builds up the more chili you
eat in a sitting. Mustard oils and such are less sensitizing studies have shown,
the burning sensation goes away faster. It doesn't accumulate over the course of
the meal like chili burn does. But this one is still pretty darn hot for a salad green,
no less. I think part of the problem is that I'm growing an older variety, an older cultivar. It
has not had all of the spiciness bred out of it for the modern market. Other thing is that
I'm growing it in summer. Summer arugula is notoriously hot because the plant makes way more
glucosinolates in the heat. The chemicals probably serve the plant as an herbivore repellent, but
they may have other functions. There's research indicating they could help break down carcinogens,
which may make them good for us to eat. There's also some indication they might
be neuroprotective, which is good, but if it's so hot that you really don't want to eat it,
you've got two options. One is to use arugula to pepper up, if you will, a comparatively bland
leaf like this baby spinach, eat them together in a salad and they even out perfectly. Second
option is to cook the arugula as I'm doing in these eggs. Heat deactivates that enzyme that
converts the glucosinolates into isothiocyanates, and so cooked arugula is not spicy. It might not
have the same health benefits, but it's not spicy and greens are basically always good for you,
so just eat them however you'll eat them. Because I'll be honest, I don't think I'm going to eat
much more of this. I mean, it is just smoke coming out of my nose. I mean, it is possibly the Whitest
thing I have ever said to say that my salad is too spicy, but my salad is too spicy. Sorry.